Kerstin Drechsel. Penate Heaven

About

Tritone, the half octave, the devils interval - “I am the devil says my mother”. This is a quote from Kerstin Drechsel's text collages, which she puts in red cross-stitch font on a white background. There are no embroideries on linen, nothing inchoate can be seen in the large-format text images: screen prints on white-primed wooden panels, which at best imitate the handicraft technique (traditionally carried out by women). The texts, consisting of incomplete sentences, catchphrases, fragments of thoughts, memories, are arranged like intertwined stanzas. Associations from different areas of life of a self-constituting self, which finds itself between religious community, emancipatory queerness, being lifted up and breaking out, collide with each other. “The kiss of peace becomes the kiss of tongue”. The biographical resonates and becomes material, among other things.

The assembly of the panels is unusual: ignoring the edges of the room, the production takes on something unstable, out of joint, like an oversized house of cards. May the Penates, the Roman household gods lying around everywhere, protect us from its collapse.