Rebekka Steiger
*1993, lives and works in Zürich

The expansive canvases of Rebekka Steiger draw on a wide range of different painterly tools and techniques: the artist uses oil paint and gouache, as well as tempera, ink, and pastel, whose specific properties decisively affect the way they are applied and their resulting impact. Once again, chance and intuition play a leading role, as Rebekka Steiger initially allows the inherent materiality of paint to take its own course. Through various experiments, such as tilting the image carrier, the liquid ink leaves its own traces, which the artist ultimately investigates. Empty spaces are sometimes filled, while other parts are painted over, expanded, and emphasized. This dichotomy gives rise to countless pictorial spheres, whose captivating, luminous colors not only refer to their own essential medial properties but are equally characterized by recurring elementary forms. Like a distant memory or fleeting mirage, outlines of landscapes, mountain ranges, or specific figures reappear, along with abstract shapes such as circles, stripes, lines, and rectangles. Faintly flickering and yet fully explicit, the paintings allow a counterbalanced coexistence of flatness and depth, proximity and distance, reality and fiction.