Kim Bartelt’s Pastel Paper “Paintings” Are the Bedrock of Her Berlin Home

When Kim Bartelt was an art student at Parsons, and then a young set designer in New York, she would often collect the colored tissue paper that comes with clothing purchases from small boutiques, or wrapped around samples when calling in pieces for a photoshoot. The papers sat for years around her apartment in a giant Paul Smith bag — first in New York, then back home in Berlin — before eventually becoming the abstract "painting" that would become the basis for a body of work she's been creating for more than half a decade.