In 2005, five years after the editorial offices of TEXTE ZUR KUNST moved from Cologne to Berlin, they themed the 57th Issue "Berlin." In 1996 the editors gave the 24th Issue the title "Versprechen Berlin" (Promise Berlin). In looking through both issues it is noticeable that what could be marketed as promise in the mid-90s is by 2005 in part or more or less subsumed by the term "disillusionment" or even "disappointment": "In recent years a lot in the art location Berlin has become unappealing" (Texte zur Kunst, Forward of the 57th Issue, 2005, Isabelle Graw and Clemens Krümmel). Nadja Abt's video, "The Interview," is an attempt to convey the peculiarities of the "production location - Berlin" between 2006 and 2012. The perspective accrues from an interview with a non-German, most probably American artist who in the near or far future develops her version of Berlin over these years in retrospect. What was Berlin actually like back then, in the time when this exhibition - which we're seeing right now and for which I'm to write the introduction text - took place.
Sigmar Polke's stained glass windows for the Großmünster in Zurich appear to serve as inspiration for Brätsch's works of glass. These windows consist of abstract patterns, which are made up of finely cut agates. However, they also consist of figurative scenes with Old Testament references. The windows are the last work that Polke realized before his death and appear to us today as works of a compressed and retrospective consequence of ideas. The windows were finished by the same Swiss manufacturer that Kerstin Braetsch now uses to develop her glass works. Additionally the shards - each and every one - that remain from Polke's finished agates form the source material of her works. While Polke instrumentalized the agates as a means to an abstract composition, Braetsch employs the discarded pieces to evoke her brush stroke-style from earlier paintings. However, her glass works can also be read as continuation of Polke's endeavor that figure as composition by secondary usage. Braetsch's secondary usage occurs from using leftovers, which is simultaneously an imitation of the work itself and a reference to the works of others; therefore they are doubly parasitic in both the sense of art history and in the sense of re-using and reevaluating the works of others. Polke's windows are based on the classic antagonism of figure and field. Kerstin Brätsch gives up this relationship, which is constitutive of painting, in that the figure of her agates or stained glass, which make up the brush strokes, are laid on transparent glass so that the field is constructed by what's behind that glass. It's a principle that she already employed in her paintings on transparencies. Here, various layers we're laid over each other; the individual transparencies are combined in a definitively coherent way. Thus, the layering refers to the whole composition in the area of contingency.
-Matthias Mühling
