Untitled by Kerstin Brätsch

Facts

Material: Glass, cast aluminium frame
Size: Various sizes
Description: 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

Image copyright: Stefan Altenburger

Brätsch's brushstrokes grace the windows looking onto the southwest atrium of Swiss Re Next.

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.

Painting is timeless, it will always exist.

Kerstin Brätsch

Six of Brätsch's brushstrokes were translated into glass and hugely enlarged to life-size.

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.

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.