About the Artist
Kerstin Brätsch (b. 1979) is an artist living and working in New York and Berlin. Through the use of such artisanal techniques as stained glass, paper marbling, and stucco marmo, and by participating in collaborative projects, she questions the agency of painting and opens it into an expanded field that moves from the personal toward the collective. She earned MFAs from Columbia University (2007) and Universität der Künste, Berlin (2008). Her work was included in the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, in 2022. Important solo exhibitions include METAATEM, Munch Museum, Oslo (2025); METAATEM, Kunstmuseum Bonn (2025); Sein, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (2022); Die Sein: Para Psychics, Ludwig Forum, Aachen (2022); and Fossil Psychics for Christa, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019). Recent group exhibitions include presentations at the Langen Foundation, Neuss (2025); Lenbachhaus, Munich (as KAYA) (2025); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2025); Museion, Bolzano (as KAYA with N.O.Madski) (2025); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2024–25); High Line, New York (2024); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2024); and Aspen Art Museum (2024).
On View
May 20, 2026–March 31, 2027
Exhibition
Kerstin Brätsch:
Fossil Psychic Stone Mimicry
(Aspen)
For its summer 2026 rooftop commission, Aspen Art Museum has invited Kerstin Brätsch to develop a site-specific presentation that places artworks in dialogue with elements of the natural world. The installation centers upon a new series of four sculptural benches, which are generated from the artist’s longtime interest in traditional craft. The artist often adopts artisanal methods, including stained glass, marbling and stucco marmo, and most recently mosaic, within her process, deploying these enduring traditions as extensions of her painting practice. Her ongoing series of mosaic benches build upon the artist’s Fossil Psychics (stucco marmo) works, in which painterly gestures become a body of fossilized fragments, as if remnants of geologic phenomena or ancient creatures. Kaleidoscopic and colorful, the benches are designed to accommodate growing plants within them, thus forming a vibrant living garden that will change through the seasons.