Kerstin Brätsch (b. Hamburg, Germany) is a painter who currently works in New York. Through her materially varied practice, Brätsch seeks to expand the definition of painting, continually challenging its delimitations. To destabilize the traditional notion of painting and authorship, she invites artisanal practices (such as stained glass, paper marbling, Stucco marmo) and collaborative projects into the equation of the history of the medium, shifting its agency from the singular to the collective. In fact, Brätsch works both autonomously and in collaboration with other artists, as part of DAS INSTITUT (with Adele Röder, from 2007) and KAYA (with Debo Eilers, from 2010) as well as other collectives, including UNITED BROTHERS (Ei and Tomoo Arakawa).
Brätsch has been the subject of several solo exhibitions, including the Serpentine Galleries, London (2016); Museum Brandhorst, Münich (2017); and Fondazione Memmo, Rome (2018), and in 2019 she completed the site specific installation Fossil Psychics for Christa for The Museum of Modern Art’s Terrace Café, New York. In 2017, she was awarded the second edition of the Edvard Munch Art Award. In 2019, Brätsch received the Villa Romana Residency in Florence, Italy with her collective KAYA and most recently she was awarded the Helen Frankenthaler award for painting from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York (2020).
