Margit Preis is not to be grasped.

The statement that Margit Preis is not to be grasped is meant in several ways:
The most recent creation of the Viennese artist was an exhibition including a performance in the Alte Schieberkammer near Meiselmarkt, a work with the hefty title "dem Wasser is' wurscht" (Viennese dialect for "Water does not mind"). But anyone expecting something down-to-earth Viennese on May 25, 2023, had a long wait. A recorder (Günther Bosek), a drum set (Dominik Dusek), a dance (Margit Preis), an attentive audience (us) and all framed by mostly new, accurately hung paintings created for twenty minutes an experiential space that was dense, strange and familiar at the same time:
On May 25, 2023, after only one trial and without any common performance practice, the three artists put on an improvised performance that was new, unexpected and original. And at the same time, everything happened completely naturally, as if it were a canonized art form that had already been described, rehearsed and copied many times. Margit Preis was once again simply not to be grasped.
We participants were participators in a creation. And what opened up before our eyes was monstrous. At first glance, the three performers were all very attentive and selectively polite. So a really peaceful and idyllic come-together in a bucolic imagined landscape with baroque flute music and an Indian dancer? Far from it. Rarely have decadence and corrosiveness been so unabashedly present as on this evening. The performance had a complexity reminiscent of symphonies by Gustav Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich.
Let's start with the paintings on display, which gave a frame to the whole performance. At first glance, they were also quite harmless. There hung a goldfish, an enlargement of a human cell, and views of Thai and Indian landscapes with Buddhas, pagodas, and lingams. The longer the performance lasted, however, the greater the abysses became. The goldfish swims in a small round naked pool of water without any plants or stones at the bottom. The picture from 2010 is called "Ego". With the poor egomaniacal goldfish some observers had to swallow a little, the association round could begin. When Margit Preis, as a dancer, then threw flirtatious and almost obscene glances at the audience with graceful movements the double bottom of the performance became visible. Unabashedly, the ego of the performers jumped around the corner, and if the flute player had had a shawm in his hands and had moved a little more, we would probably have followed him gladly and quickly like children following the Pied Piper from Hamelin.
The large colored "human cell" from the year 2022, on the other hand, reminded us at first glance of biology lessons. It actually depicts one of the most detailed human cell images to date, which are usually obtained using X-rays, nuclear magnetic resonance and cryoelectron microscopy. But a second look revealed that one side of the central opening, reminiscent of a vulva, is toothed like a carnivorous plant. The cell suddenly became sinister, and associations with cancer and Covid-19 emerged.
The idylls of the travel collages "refined breath" (2007), "Julley" (2014) and "Narmade Har" (2021) could not make us forget the Chinese reprisals against the Tibetans, and then there were pictures of environmental destruction ("Lobau bleibt", 2023), on reality as illusion ("Echo", 2023), or a memento mori that was also recently created: a skull in the water with the picture title "dem Wasser is' wurscht" (Water does not mind) from the year 2022. In the style of "Remember, human, that you are made of dust, and to dust you will return," this water image probably means "We are all made of water and to water we will return."
Which brought us full circle, because while this was a depressing image, it was also a tantalizing notion, and in no time at all we were back at Alan Watt's 1975 cult Taoist book "The Watercourse Way".
In the background of the performance, the relaxing sound of the sea. Together with the former slide chamber of the Viennese high spring water pipeline, all this spanned a wide arc with glimpses into the abysses of the soul and humanity and a nevertheless conciliatory end, which could also be felt through the works "Selbst" (Self), "Wasserkristall" (Water Crystal) and "Wasserfall" (Waterfall), all from 2023.
So Margit Preis is obviously painting again. Is this not a contradiction? Did she not announce in a big way in 2012 that she was done with painting [see "Finalement: The brush laid to rest"]? And yet now new paintings again?
For once, the answer here does not require a reference to Margit Preis's "ungraspability": In the past, she had to paint in order to process the impressions from outside, to balance her own ego and to fight for free space. This need has ended and remains so. The necessity of artistic output has dwindled. Nevertheless, the world continues to form and create itself from and through Margit Preis, who for some time has also called herself a meditalin, thus naming a continuous progression of physical and mental permeability. This growing transparency now manifests itself in dance, in performances and also in new paintings. And it is evident in the choice of material: Since "Finalement" at the latest, the artist has been working almost exclusively with colored ink, which she applies to canvas with pen and brush – a technique of immense color power and airy delicacy.

Christian Kniescheck, Vienna, June 2023
Translation by Dennis Johnson
DE | EN