BLACKY Blocked Radiants Sunbathed. Double sided painting from Glow Rod Tanning Series

Kerstin Brätsch’s wide-ranging practice rejects the sanctity of gallery walls: her vibrant abstractions blur the line between painting and object, occupying whatever space they wish. She, too, refuses to be pinned down, operating as part of the two-person collective DAS INSTITUT and mimicking corporate production and presentation through this semi-fictional body. The present work features her signature scalloped brushstroke, applied by hand but coolly digital in gradient, snaking ochre and aubergine over the slick transparency of mylar – an industrial plastic film – resulting in what she calls a ‘ghost.’ These works, she explains, are ‘oil paintings, done by hand, and many of the motifs are inspired by digital efects and digital brushstrokes, if you will. You can hang ghosts however you like. On one you’ll see through the plastic, so the paint will have a fattened, produced appearance. The opposite side reveals the brushwork, the production’ (K. Brätsch, quoted in M. Cattelan, ‘Kerstin Brätsch: Vendo Tutto, in Flash Art, October 2011, p. 71). Aesthetically confounding but obstinately beautiful, this artistic doppelgänger is a vibrant vision of the postmodern potential of painting in an age of virtual appearances.