Sereina Steinemann (* 1984, Richterswil) works in different media, painting both non-figuratively and symbolically. Their work is characterized by a great formal clarity and the (often humorous) play with forms between professional production and visible handwriting. Her conceptual attitude – regardless of whether in painting, photography, video, or in books, postcards and posters – is always interested in the specific possibilities of these individual media. In this way, she puts together colours and shapes, found and own images and titles, photos and poetry, gaining unusual insights into the interaction of the individual elements in a book, in an acrylic painting, in a lexicon or in an installation.

For more than a year, she has been busy with figurative, symbolic painting. The motifs are in reduced, partly comic-like drawing style, painted flat with rich colour application with acrylic on cotton. The reduced-representational, symbolic or figurative motifs are often borrowed from the medium of comics. The artist is particularly interested in the combination of non-representativeness and symbolism.

At the Galerie Bischoff & Partner, Sereina Steinemann is now exhibiting a new series of works that is connected with these explorations. The fictional comic figure is Ruby Rabbit, a detective. For this figure, she elaborates a vocabulary of its activities by means of painting, but the figure herself is not represented, but only in its attributes such as hat, glasses, shoe, it work materials such as magnifying glass, evidence or technical equipment. This is always a reflection of the medium of painting and a connection between abstraction and objectivity. The figure is gradually presented in the exhibition and can be reconstructed by the consideration of the works like the pictures, flyers and posters. The title of the exhibition could be an adventure of the figure.

Not only the medium comic serves Steinemann as a reference system for this group of works, but also the exploration of contemporary and historical positions in painting and the aesthetics of TV, film, literature, advertising (outside, print media and the Internet) graffiti and situations in the cityscape and everyday life (shop windows, flyers) flow into their work. The development of this new series of works allows her to combine different media and to deal with different questions, such as the popular-cultural character of the detective or the problematic of narrative without protagonists: since Ruby Rabbit is never visible, but only the accessories and traces, so to speak, the vocabulary of the figure, also produce different versions of the main figure.

Sereina Steinemann received the Manor Kunstpreis Schaffhausen in 2015.
2014 Studio stay in Berlin (6 months)
2016 Studio stay in Linz (2 months)
2015, 2016, 2017 Nomination Aeschlimann Corti Stipendium
Solo exhibitions:
2017 Das Rätsel der Pyramiden, Alpineum Produzentengalerie Luzern,
2017 Ordnen, pflegen, messen, prüfen, etagen, Loeb-Treppenhaus, Bern
2016 Les oranges bleues, maxxx project space, Sierre
2015 SACRAMENTO, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, 2015
Group exhibitions (selection): 2017/18 Jahresausstellung Zentralschweizer Kunstschaffen, Kunstmuseum Luzern, 2016/17; Cantonale Berne Jura, 2016 Kunsthaus Langenthal, Solide Pläne, Lokal-int; 2014 ALLES WIE NIE ZUVOR, zwanzigquadratmeter, Berlin; 2014/15 Jahresausstellung Zentralschweizer Kunstschaffen, Kunstmuseum Luzern; 2011/12 Cantonale Berne Jura, Kunsthaus Langenthal; 2009 Weihnachtsausstellung Kunsthalle Bern