The conversation is held in English.
Notice: The event is free, but be aware that a ticket does not guarantee a seat. Due to limited capacity, please arrive early to secure your spot
Ticket to the talk includes admission to the exhibitions
The Sky Room has limited capacity, so please arrive early to secure a seat.
Welcome to this conversation between artist Kerstin Brätsch, art historian Kerstin Stakemeier and curator Lars Toft-Eriksen. Together they will be discussing Brätsch’s artistic practice and the exhibition MƎTAATEM.
What is a painting – and what are its potential limits? Brätsch’s artistry is always grounded in painting, but it appears to be ambiguous and in flux. She allows a painting’s subject matter to assume new forms via such media as drawing, photography, video and sculpture. She also brings new techniques and knowledge traditions into her work through a variety of collaborations with craftspeople and other artists.
Esoteric, psychedelic ideas about the relationship between consciousness, body and painting are central to Brätsch’s practice. Translucent veils of colour and swirling brushstrokes recall energy streams, cosmic forces or interior visions, where form and meaning are in constant motion. This conversation will examine who – or what – actually shapes the meaning of a work.
Kerstin Brätsch by Gabriel Rossell Santillan
Kerstin Brätsch (b. 1979 in Hamburg, Germany) has distinguished herself as a powerful and relevant voice in international contemporary art. She has exhibited her work in many leading institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, and the Serpentine Gallery, London, UK. Brätsch works both solo and in collaboration with other artists, including Adele Röder, Debo Eilers and Serge Tcherepnin. She studied at Columbia University, New York and Universität der Künste, Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin.
In 2017 she was awarded the Edvard Munch Art Award. The jury highlighted how Brätsch has secured her position in the international art scene via many impressive exhibitions and projects. The jury further stated that Brätsch has enormous potential to develop her career in the coming years, and that they looked forward to following her future work with great interest.
Lars Toft-Eriksen
Lars Toft-Eriksen is Senior Curator at MUNCH and curator of Kerstin Brätsch’s exhibition at the museum. He holds a PhD in art history from the University of Oslo. He specializes in Edvard Munch, surrealism and Scandinavian modernism. In his research on Munch he has in particular focused on critical analysis of ideological and mythological narratives in art historiography. He has curated a number of exhibitions within the fields of modern and contemporary art, including thematic exhibitions on surrealism and modernism, as well exhibitions on Edvard Munch, Asger Jorn, Ludvig Karsten, Ole Jørgen Ness and Bjarne Melgaard. He is currently working on exhibitions with the Swiss artist Miriam Cahn and the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe.
Kerstin Stakemeier
Kerstin Stakemeier is a professor of art theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg, always a writer, sometimes a curator. With Anselm Franke she realized the exhibition Illiberal Arts at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2021) and Illiberal Lives at Stiftung Moderne Kunst Ludwig Forum Aachen (2023), with Bill Dietz she wrote Universal Receptivity (2021), with Marina Vishmidt Reproducing Autonomy (Mute, 2016). In 2017 she published Entgrenzter Formalismus. Verfahren einer antimodernen Ästhetik with bbooks (Berlin). She writes a.o. for Berliner Review, Mousse and CURA and with Devin Fore works on “Fantasies of the People. Historically there were never any others” (2025). Their long-term collaboration will take its first public form with an international conference at Princeton University March 28/29th 2025.
Kerstin Brätsch, Unstable Talismanic Rendering _Schrättel (with gratitude to master marbler Dirk Lange), 2017. Pigment, watercolor, ink and solvent on paper.
