Kerstin Brätsch

During the pandemic Kerstin Brätsch shifted into a slow and inward-looking mode and made one hundred dense 11x14-inch large color-pencil drawings over the course of the last two years. The Para Psychics are time-collectors, each filled with an array of metaphysical traditions ranging from mythology, Tarot, symbolism, mysticism, astrology, numerology, spiritism to magic, Herbalism, and plant medicine. Organized in two parts, the first beautifully reproduces each drawing on its own spread, inviting the viewer into Brätsch’s fluidly interwoven cosmos. A second part puts the drawings into dialogue with newly commissioned texts and excerpted historical reprints, a constellation of ideas that shaped the artist’s thought process. We witness how Brätsch activated especially the female aspects of the worlds of mythology, art, social history, poetry, and anthropology. Another contribution comprises images that inspired the artist accompanied by Brätsch’s and Funcke’s annotations on how they are connected to the drawings and reproduced texts, pointing to the many interlinked and constantly transitioning worlds that make up the Para Psychics.