Untitled by Kerstin Brätsch
2013 – 2017
Kerstin BrätschFacts
- Material
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Glass, cast aluminium frame
- Size
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Various sizes
- Description
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Kerstin Brätsch is a painter. She breaks painting down to its smallest unit, the individual brushstroke. Six of these brushstrokes, translated into glass and hugely enlarged to life-size, grace the windows looking onto the southwest atrium of Swiss Re Next.
- Location
- Zurich, Swiss Re Next
© 2014 Kerstin Brätsch
Image copyright: Stefan Altenburger
But even without this translation into glass, the technique in question is a distancing gesture: this so-called "one-stroke technique" involves assembling different paints on a broad brush, allowing her to apply several colours in a single stroke. The result is a ready-made gradation of colour, itself referring to light. Which is just one step away from a translation into glass. There's no such thing as the one brushstroke, says this technique, but always multiple strokes; no such thing as origin or originality, rather a multiple identity.
Every colour is already a gradation and every gesture is a translation. Which doesn't mean they shouldn't be taken seriously in terms of expression. On the contrary. But it is the expression of a polymorphic present, and no longer that of an authentic individual.