!"#$$% &' ~ Kerstin Brätsch & Amy Sillman CHROMOPHILIA BY KERSTIN B RÄTSCH AND A MY S ILLMAN Kerstin Brätsch for DAS INSTITUT, “Nichts, Opposite, from top – Amy Sillman, Nichts!”, installation view, Kunstverein Untitled, 2005. Courtesy: Susanne Cologne, 2011. Courtesy: the artists. Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Photo: Simon Vogel Los Angeles Bottom – Amy Sillman, Untitled, 2009-10. Kerstin Brätsch,“Psychic” series, 2007. Courtesy: the artist Courtesy: the artist 164 !"#$$% &' ~ Kerstin Brätsch & Amy Sillman Amy Sillman and Kerstin Brätsch are obsessed by colors. Murderous colors that annihilate, enveloping everything, poison-colors, cure-colors, colors that mix Wi0 And it seems like you do fuss over the color – if you don’t like it, you clearly paint on the palette and can never be found again. The color that springs from the over it and adjust it. There are all these little body, from the movement of the productive body-machine. Not to mention anti- places where you see colors painted over other colors, shadow-colors, digital colors. The colors of the iPhone manipulated with colors, really trying to get it just right. the fingers on that tiny screen. aX0 Unfortunately there is no copy and paste key... Wcoi_bbcWd0Maybe we could start by talking about color. Your strange colors seems to be in- fecting the world. They remind me of this sci-( fantasy story by H.P. Lovecraft called The Color Out of Wi0 I guess there’s a di)erence between your Space – about a killer color that comes from outer space. It crashes into earth in a spaceship and lives as choi ce of color and your use of color. Is color a a blob in a farmer’s barn, and whenever it comes out of the barn, it kills everything around it. kind of readymade for you, then? aX0 That’s an interesting observation, because I kind of relate the use of color to the tools or (l- ters of digital programs, which is all based on a selection of choices, e)ects and your needs. Since I move *uidly between individual and collective practice I see my paintings always dedicated into DAS INSTITUT and that de(nitely in*uences my approach and my production of them. Even in my use of color I am probably infected by the compu- ter-generated designs of my artistic partner Adele Röder and vice versa. I try to alter between third person perspective and resolute dedication within painting. Wi0 But, do you feel your choice of color re*ets a palette that is particular to you, even though you work with Adele, and you may use color as a kind of computer e)ect? aX0Yes, it’s personal. How do YOU think about color? a[hij_dXhjiY^0What color is it? Wi0Well, totally organic compared to you. I Wi0I don’t know! I haven’t read the book yet! guess I always collapse issues of choi ce and use. I’m interested in color as a body phenomenon aX0I love it. Well, maybe we could talk about the di)erences in how we treat color in paintings. and I like it as a kind of ugly force. I think pur- ple is ugly, for instance, but I’m making a big Wi0How do you choose a color? painting in purple now. aX0 Purple is so related to a housewife... or something funerary... Wi0Do you (nd purple maudlin? aX: Maybe, but I don’t really think about the mean- ing of a color. Or, I think about the meaning of the use, but not the narrative. I think of the physical reaction it gives me. And then, my mum, she took silk painting classes and loved to paint these purple and mauve silk paintings... Wi0 That’s funny, silk painting kind of re- minds me of the way you’re painting now. aX0Well, yes maybe... Wi0The forms you’re painting look like how they would paint foliage on silk. aX0Okay, you can interpret them as foliage, but not really – I actually see it as just brush stroke and aX0 Instinct, I think. the physicality of the brushstroke. And that physi- cality has di)erent associations – it could be foli- Wi0You mean, like an experience, a mood? age, a leftover body limb, or some violence going on. Equivocation is employed as strategy. So the aX0 Maybe, or a physical reaction even. Also I am trying to think of color like a given, maybe coming association is physical but wide enough that there close to a set of tools or (lters from a computer program. is not just one meaning, actually: no meaning at all. It’s a fragment of an e)ect. But then – and this is Wi0 Is the color arbitrary then? I see the brush stroke in your work as purposeful, not arbitrary at all. particular in my latest body of work, the Blocked Radi ants ( for I oana) – weirdly enough, when put aX0The color is, in that sense, not arbitrary either because it’s mixed on the palette, very obviously. together, these fragments of e)ects create an ex- pression of poisoned matter; and that’s the contra- 165 !"#$$% &' ~ Kerstin Brätsch & Amy Sillman diction of it, how by using all these tools and tricks Polke? And then immediately, in that moment, you me to get through sequences more lightly and the opposite is created; an expressive internal site. refer to the history of painting and its e)ects. It’s at the same time, more crudely. These paintings are very physical and they deal not empty anymore but loaded with historical ref- with the Body as Abstraction, intending to brutally erence, or by now it’s completely emptied out... aX0In a sense I think of painting also as sequenc- express anxiety, tenderness, alienation, re*ection, ing or mutation. I am interested in the relationship private aggression and loss. Or more straightfor- Wi0 I dont think about that so much, hon- to Ori gi nal i ty and Seri al i t y. So the work is an exer- wardly: Death. They are really supposed to con- estly, because I just feel like I”m taking every- cise in constant sideways shifts, where a painting taminate. thing apart. In a way it’s how I DON’T have can be partly copied or mutated and can become to think about all that painting history. I don’t a ghostly image of itself and the identity of “the Wi0 Is it perhaps connected to the pharma- allow for it. painter” also is treated as something interim and kon – the Greek word that means color, but mutable. If I paint something haptic, it is supposed also poison and also remedy? When you say aX0So you’re also using a trick of the mind... I’m to be only a fragment, like sample pieces of mate- “ability”, do you think that ability or agency is just saying when painting, there is an awareness of rial, a swatch. In that sense I really like what you expressed in your use of color? how things have been used and maybe an attempt mentioned earlier about the readymade, since its an to (nd a new usage of the tools in “painting” and interest to integrate the personal back into a given aX0I don’t give the color an agency. “the painter”. The painter, the (gure “Brätsch”, structure. But then the painting is also supposed to how I use the painter in quotes within the way i be a basic part of a platform of inter-relationships, Wi0 ...but your color has a lot of power... work and the scale I’m using, it’s de(nitely a refer- where the artistic production is de-centered and ence to the history of German painting. *exible like an ongoing role-play. aX0 There’s a di)erence between agency and power... Wi0Yes it’s true, I enjoy occupying this ter- Wi0 Right. I love doubling procedures. I ritory where I feel like I’m an imposter, and love the idea of work that arrives to a place ad- Wi: But where did the concept of a trick come I’m also kind of proud of using a “male” scale, jacent to itself. from? What’s a trick? Is it a trick in the sense so to speak. It’s a form of drag for me. that it looks one way but it’s made another aX0Yeah. way? Or, an illusion? Wi0Both our paintings look really di)erent aX0I don’t mean an illusion. in photos and in real life. When you see them in real life, they poke at you. They have edges Wi0Do you mean something deceitful? and sheen and texture and layers. But when I see your paintings in the photographs, I was aX0I mean the way I use the simplest application more aware of the aspect of them that is con- of paint within a brushstroke. nected to an overall design structure: they’re It’s really just a brush stroke, a trick within the ap- carved away or hacked out in a strong way, plication of paint. The “trick” is creating an e)ect, and space is reversed: the sky is white, and for example by the mixing of the color – a kind of there is a kind of solar eye in acid colors, with arbitrary mixing of the color with the brush and by plants and animals that look like irradiated fur the movement of the hand. So maybe I am trying or vines. They kind of look like they’re made something paradoxical, by using the color and its of kudzu.