Kerstin Brätsch was born in Hamburg in 1979 and today lives and works in New York City. Since 2007, she and fellow artist Adele Röder (born in 1980) have been running DAS INSTITUT, an import and export agency that humorously undermines clichés about art and the classic image of the artist. Both artists create works for and with DAS INSTITUT that are put into the context of a fictional reception of products. Their topics include the identity of artistic authorship in the mixture of names and works, originals and acquisition processes in a large number of “shipments.” They take a colourful and critical approach, letting design and pictorial ideas wander freely as paintings, graphics and in specially created product lines.

For the 2010 Ringier Annual Report, the two artists researched how Ringier products are represented internationally and how they are translated culturally in the various countries. Having just developed a digital knitwear line themselves, they ended up choosing one of the few lifestyle and fashion magazines Ringier AG puts out: Thoi Trang Tre, a publication produced in Ho Chi Minh City and sold in Vietnam.

Thoi Trang Tre thus became the artistic version of the annual report for Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder in form and content. Together with the team from the magazine, they developed a photo series and product presentations for their knitwear line and DAS INSTITUT. They put art and their own company marketing in a context as unexpected as it is obvious, albeit far away. They planted the Ringier AG Annual Report in the magazine in keeping with their playfully parasitic nesting of the company interests of DAS INSTITUT. A dual-company appearance in multiple packaging with several gifts thrown in.

Ringier Corporate Communications