For the exhibition, Kerstin Brätsch has transformed Kunstmuseum Bonn into a living organism of painting. The central starting point is the relationship between painting and the body on a physical, psychological and social level. Like a portal to another world, visitors pass through a kind of labyrinth of color, light and sound or step in front of a suggestive wallpaper with mirrored motifs reminiscent of the inkblot tests of the psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach.
Similar to the principle of mimicry in animals, in which they imitate patterns from their environment to protect themselves from threats, the artist takes elements from her own works and makes them appear again and again in new forms and materials.
She “petrifies” her own brushstrokes by transforming them into sculptural objects made of cement. At the same time, she regularly collaborates with other artists and craftspeople and incorporates factors such as light and chance as equal elements in the artistic process. In doing so, she poses fundamental questions about the authorship and subjectivity of painting in order to put its effectiveness to the test again and again.
With new productions and over 100 works from the past 15 years, the exhibition provides a broad overview of the artist’s work.They are complemented by collaborative projects by DAS INSTITUT (with Adele Röder), Sergei Tcherepnin, KAYA (with Debo Eilers) and Wibke Tiarks. Since 2007, Kerstin Brätsch’s works have been shown in international exhibitions and repeatedly at the Venice Biennale. She is represented in important collections and has received prestigious prizes, most recently the Tiemann Prize.
All works courtesy of: Kerstin Brätsch, Adele Röder, Debo Eilers, Sergei Tcherepnin as well as Gladstone Gallery, Gió Marconi Gallery, Milan and Deborah Schamoni Gallery.
