Lika Nüssli: “All for Nothing”

Description

Award-winning artist Lika Nüssli draws inspiration from Robert Walser’s approximately 1,000 short texts and transforms their subtle irony into powerful, poetic watercolors. In 69 large-format works, Nüssli engages in a playful and imaginative visual dialogue with Walser. The exhibition also marks the publication of the “Feuilleton” section of Robert Walser’s works in the authoritative Bern edition published by Suhrkamp Verlag—a literary event that is also being celebrated in Bern through the visual arts. The seven-volume edition, available at the exhibition, brings together all of Robert Walser’s short texts—stories and prose pieces, poems, and theatrical scenes—that originally appeared in newspapers and magazines, in the order of their publication. This “writing for nothing,” as Walser called his work for the media of that time, constituted his main literary activity. He pursued it throughout his entire writing career—from his first poems in 1898 to his last texts, published by his guardian in 1948. The feature articles reveal Walser as a keen observer of his time, a master of the miniature, and a tireless experimenter with language and form. With the Bern edition, these texts are now being made available in their entirety for the first time in an annotated edition accessible to a broad audience. Lika Nüssli, the St. Gallen-based artist who gained international attention with her impressive graphic novel *Starkes Ding*, has a special connection to Robert Walser. “To me, Robert Walser is someone I feel I’ve always known,” she says. She first encountered his work in her youth—through her sister’s books, a play in Herisau, and later through the fascinating micrograms. Walser’s writings, “full of wonderful irony and a cheeky wink,” continue to accompany her to this day. “For me, drawing means thinking, observing the world, and giving it form—as a suggestion, as an offering to others.” In her exhibition, Nüssli reveals how she spins out Walser’s stories, twists them, and expands them into something open and fluid. Her works emerge from the moment, trusting in association, and transform time and space into that “little nothing” that opens up between Walser, his work, and herself. Lika Nüssli explores and experiments with narrative in diverse forms. Her extensive body of work, which includes drawings, illustrations, performances, and texts, has received numerous awards, most recently the 2023 Swiss Literature Prize for the graphic novel *Starkes Ding*, published by Edition Moderne. The exhibition Lika Nüssli: “Für die Katz” is an exploration of Robert Walser’s feuilletons that is as unconventional as it is original, and at the same time a tribute to his unmistakable literary universe. Exhibition Publication Robert Walser: Feuilletons. Scattered Publications During His Lifetime. 7 vols. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2025. – Available at any bookstore or directly from the Robert Walser Center!