The brushstroke is considered the painter’s signature, their distinctive style. But what happens when this very notion is repeatedly called into question? In Episode 17 of Gallery Weekend – The Art Podcast, artist Kerstin Brätsch (born 1979 in Hamburg) explores this fascinating question together with Silke Hohmann. Brätsch has fundamentally expanded the concept of painting and asks what painting can achieve beyond the picture surface. A wide variety of materials, techniques, and craft processes interact with one another, while the works remain in constant motion. Brätsch understands painting as a kind of metabolism that unfolds in interaction with the viewer and is in a state of constant change. In this process, a painterly gesture can detach itself from the image, transition into a different state, and open up new spaces and contexts.
Her project BAUBAU at the Gropius Bau—a play world created specifically for children—demonstrates how such a practice can extend throughout an entire space. Here, art merges with everyday life and becomes usable, as children can freely play with the spaces and objects, altering them and reassembling them anew time and again.
And what do fortune-tellers and tourist painters in New York—or the “fossilized” remnants of a work by Sigmar Polke—have to do with all this? The episode explores these unexpected connections and also offers a first glimpse into Brätsch’s upcoming exhibition at the Thomas Schulte Gallery on Charlottenstraße.
