Kerstin Hansel

On the work

Born in Berlin in the 1960s, I live and work in the city that shaped my artistic language. The cultural awakening, the subculture and the creative nonconformity of 1980s West Berlin still run through my work today.

My work moves between painting, collage and mixed media. Fragments of pop culture, street art, typography and things found in daily life condense into layered compositions where memory, transience and urban energy meet. Layer by layer, pictorial spaces take shape in a visual language of my own, one that joins the raw with the poetic and keeps drawing the eye to new details. I collect, keep and transform. What others overlook or throw away becomes part of a new visual story. I am fascinated by the traces that people, time and cities leave behind: their histories, their breaks, their overlaps. My works tell no single story; they invite you to form your own associations and rediscover your own memories. These image worlds are my homage to the urban, to the imperfect and the fleeting, and to the beauty that appears when opposites meet.