THUN.- Rebekka Steiger (b. 1993, lives in Zurich, works in Lucerne and Beijing) is both a painter and a storyteller who spirits us away to strange and colourful dream worlds in her work. Sometimes flowery, at other times eerie, her paintings are marked by a dialectic of simultaneous movement and standstill.

Those who step into her universe encounter realities near and far, discovering landscapes, nature scenes, and mythological and fantastic figures from Western and Eastern traditions. Steiger’s paintings contain narratives that tell of different worlds. These stories are in turn united by the signature exploratory painting style that distinguishes her artistic practice. Worked over in multiple layers using various experimental techniques, Steiger’s large-format canvases can be read in myriad ways. For some of her works, for example the more abstract ones, the artist uses small pieces of paper as tools for soaking up and dabbing paint onto the canvas. Once this process has been carried out several times in different sections, the artist uses brush and ink to paint onto the canvas the concrete figures that sometimes give the work its title. In other pictures, especially the alpine landscapes, the random and surprising element of this printing technique is replaced by carefully prepared and precisely executed painting.

The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Thun presents the many different facets of Rebekka Steiger’s artistic practice. The title already offers various possibilities for reading and perception, as the Chinese word bīngfēng, written in Pinyin – the phonetic system that uses the letters of the Latin alphabet for the pronunciation of Chinese – cannot be defined precisely and remains ambiguous until the specific Chinese characters are known. Due to its multiple meanings, the word carries different connotations depending on the knowledge of each individual.

The exhibition follows a thematic path based on the literary works that the artist develops in connection with her paintings. These texts, which Steiger calls title stories, are like essays on the underlying themes or sources of inspiration for certain paintings. But they are also intended to serve as extensions of the titles. The content of these texts – and thus also of the works – ranges from commentary on language to the natural sciences, from East Asian folklore to the Swiss mountains, comprising fragments of the artist’s personal experiences at home and abroad. Certain works or entire galleries in the exhibition are directly linked to the title stories, read aloud by the artist. The visitors can listen to the stories on an audio guide or smartphone. They provide orientation and also encourage reflection, complementing the visual artwork with an artistic linguistic component.

ENTRANCE

Bīngfēng begins with one of the artist’s earliest works in the exhibition, dead wake (2019). The title of the work, which is accompanied by a title story that the artist wrote in 2023 during an artistic residency in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, has two meanings: The literal translation is ‘wake’ meaning vigil for the dead, but the word is also a nautical term for the flattened wake that remains on the surface of the sea long aher the vessel that created it has disappeared. Certain features of the work evoke fleeting traces that point to the presence of anthropomorphic or abstract figures. The silhouette of a volcano appears on the hori- zon, recalling Asian landscapes.

GALLERY 1

In Steiger’s work, very specific figures recur again and again. The main motif in this gallery is the fox. Called kitsune in Japanese, this animal is regarded as a magical creature in both Chinese and Japanese mythology. In many legends, the up to nine-tailed kitsune is depicted as a powerful spirit and shape-shiher that can transform itself into a human, usually an alluring woman, in order to satisfy its desire for wisdom and greater spiritual force through cunning and beauty. The works in this gallery depict the animal in varied ways: fleetingly, in the midst of nature, or statically, flanked by a female figure.

GALLERY 2

This gallery is dedicated in particular to Steiger’s land- scape scenes. Forming almost an exception in her oeuvre, various alpine views are depicted for example in the works bīngfēng (2021) and blue streak II (2024). The artist first meticulously studies the actual views before setting them down precisely on the canvas. On long hikes, she selects certain places to capture with her camera and then faithfully reproduces the photos in her studio. By using colours that reflect both a particular light and a particular moment, Steiger applies a new modus operandi to painting landscapes that she has known since childhood, for example places she ohen frequented in Grisons.

GALLERY 3

In this gallery, ephemeral female figures face each other. Steiger painted modern charities (2023) at the end of her studio residency in Ho Chi Minh City. In the image, three figures emerge from the background, representing female spirits walking towards the viewer. The figures remain shrouded in a mysterious fog, which is referred to in title story number 17 with the Vietnamese name ma quỷ vô đồng tử (meaning demon without pupils). The title of the work olivewing (2021), by contrast, refers to a real-life creature with almost fantastical features: a typical South American butterfly whose wings are coloured blue by a pure pigment. Instead of using the exact pigment typical of this insect in the painting, the artist juxtaposes light blue and olive green hues in an abstract manner to create with this mixture figures that can be read as both animal and human, just like the kitsune spirits.

GALLERY 4

Another leitmotif in Steiger’s work is the rider. The medieval knight-errant is an archetypal image for the harmonisation that unfolds on the path to inner and spiritual truth. For the artist, the rider condenses various stories of famous equestrian figures from different cultural and historical contexts. Her riders thus quote literary, mythological and historical figures such as Genghis Khan, the tragicomic Don Quixote, the prince from Sleeping Beauty, and the Ellerkonge, or Erlkönig, that Goethe lihed from the Danish legend. Armour-clad riders galloping towards the viewer wielding raised swords and flags raise the question of whether they are coming to protect, rescue or fight.

GALLERY 5

In the museum’s ‘Veranda’, Steiger presents a series of new works on paper that have been specially developed for the exhibition. In these monotypes, one of them large-format, the artist brings together several themes from her painting, varying and reinterpreting them in the print medium. Monotypes are unique works of art in which ink is applied directly to a plate, which is then placed in the printing press to transfer the painted or drawn image onto the paper. This direct process lends the monotype great spontaneity and speed – although Steiger deliberately subverts these characteristics in her large-format interpretation of the painting of the same name, bīngfēng [monotype] (2025), for example, by meticulously transferring the motif to the sheet in eight printing steps.

The video shown in the Veranda is a short portrait of Rebekka Steiger produced for the exhibition Octopus mountain at Tank Shanghai (1.3. – 3.6.2024). Shot in January 2024 at the artist’s studio in Kriens, Lucerne, it shows the painter at work. In conversation with director Vadim Jendreyko, Steiger talks about her approach to painting, aspects crucial to her practice and the making of specific works including the title stories.

To accompany the exhibition, Hatje Cantz has published the first comprehensive monograph on the artist (D/E; ISBN 978- 3-7757-5941-0). The catalogue features five title stories by Rebekka Steiger as well as essays by Claudia Jolles, Patricia Bieder, Sophia Remer, Chiara Ottavi and Peter Stohler.