Sereina Steinemann (*1984, Richterswil) works in various media and paints both non-objectively and figuratively. What her works have in common is a great formal clarity and the (often humorous) play with forms between professional production and visible handwriting. With her conceptual approach – whether in painting, drawing or in booklets and books, on postcards and posters – she’s always interested in the specific possibilities of the respective media. In this way, she places colors and shapes, found and her own pictures and titles, non-fiction photographs and poetry next to and in relation to each other and thus gains unusual insights into the interaction of the individual elements in a book, an acrylic painting, an encyclopedia or an installation.

The exhibition ‹Tag im Leben› explores different attitudes to everyday life. From everyday text messages and dried leaves to everyday objects that can be very special in their own way (such as the hat of a comic figure or a note on a cellar door): The individual objects and situations, plants and interiors always stand for certain social and artistic practices. Like ciphers, they refer to collecting and writing, to pressing, painting, building, to observing and viewing, to dealing with the weather, with comics, with advertising and with living together in society. Each picture creates its own reference to everyday life. And it is up to the viewer to decide whether the exhibition as a whole refers to a single, specific day or whether each picture represents a different «day in life».

For the current exhibition ‹Tag im Leben› at the Gallery Bernhard Bischoff & Partner, the artist has built a plinth from scrap wood. On the plinth are three printouts in stacks to take away. A photocopied picture shows people looking at specially shaped rock formations, a list of noted everyday observations and a printed spam e-mail.

In 2023, Sereina Steinemann won the Spot on Prize of the city of Lucerne. This includes an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Luzern and a publication. The exhibition in the gallery is a kind of prelude to these two projects, which we can eagerly await in summer 2025.

Photo credit: Jean-Pierre Balmer (except «Asparagus Fern», «Buche», «Hut», «Waschtag»)