bernd preiml is a visual artist

living and working

in vienna

i grew up in the rural parts of western and southern austria.

there was a lot of folklore, traditions and church.

and surfaces… a lot of surfaces.

pretty decorated houses and beautiful mountains and forests and lakes and costumes and masks and music and statues and palaces and castles and the sun was always shining.

i grew up in a postcard.

but there was something else…

my work is rooted in photography but i also use sculpting, painting, sewing, digital manipulation and ai to explore

the possibilities of form, content, meaning and expression.

i love experiments with different materials, genres and styles.

although I try to give my images an organic feel, they are very constructed and highly artificial.

the moment of „capturing“ is stretched from pre-production to sometimes extensive post-production, re-sampling and re-editing.

coincidents and mistakes play an important role in this process, as i work very intuitively and try to let the material evolve itself.

series of associative context and fragments of narratives are often the results.

sometimes with a dream-like quality to them.

works exhibited at

MAK Vienna / Austrian Cultural Forum NYC / Künstlerhaus Vienna / MQ Vienna / Weltmuseum Vienna / Theatermuseum Vienna / Kunstraum NÖ / Liu Haisu Art Museum Shanghai / Museum of Modern Fine Art Minsk / Gallerie Medium Bratislava /

Gallerie Artbits Vienna / Hyères Festival / Volkstheater Wien / Bread and Butter Berlin / Gallerie Wintergarten / Unit F Vienna /

Foto K Vienna / Interfashion Graz / Kunsthalle Vienna…

works in books and magazines

Black Magic White Noise / Gestalten Verlag
Black Metal Rainbows / PM Press
Kelvin / Colour Today / Gestalten Verlag
Wiener Chic / Verlag Anton Pustet
Rosebud / Gestalten Verlag
Rondo / Die Presse Schaufenster / Spex / Falter / Booklet Magazine / Perfect Eagle / The All Season Fashion Paper / Qvest / Park / Peng! / Coilhouse / Silver / Diva / Maxima / Indie / Vlna / Yifei Vision / Style in Progress / Style and the Family Tunes / Drome / Licht / .copy /

Rosebud Magazine…

Bernd Preiml’s Exquisite Apparitions /excerpt

by Jessica Joslin

Bernd Preiml’s photographs describe a world filled with magic and mystery, often coupled with a disconcerting sense that sinister forces may be lurking. Growing up in the mountainous countryside of Austria, he seems to have internalized some of the quiet inscrutability of the snow-shrouded mountains and trees. As a boy, he was struck by the rich colors and lush pageantry of Catholicism, set against the wildness of nature. He recalls festive processions in traditional costumes and folk tales about ancient creatures and wild people who inhabited the forests.

Many of his subjects are hauntingly lovely, yet there is a sense of intensity, whether manic or melancholy, hovering around the eyes and below the skin. This is not the type of beauty that sits prettily on the surface of a face, obscuring what lies beneath. His characters engage the viewer with a disturbing, sometimes mesmerizing force. Although Preiml’s work often appears in the context of fashion magazine editorials, he uses the viewer’s presumptions to create confusion. He embraces the idea of creating something entirely unexpected, something poignant, strange, or delightful, hiding amidst the frivolity. He understands that beauty isn’t interesting unless it is somehow soiled, unless it is complex.

Through all of his deliciously rich visual narratives, he explores memories and desires, as if seen through the poetic fragmentation of a dream.

Schoener Schmutz: Notizen zu Bernd Preiml

Gedanken zur Ausstellung „Mega Bliss“ von Christian Fuchs

Wer im Hier und Jetzt nach spannenden künstlerischen Äußerungen sucht, wird am ehesten in einem diffusem Grenzbereich fündig. In dieser undefinierten Zone zwischen den diametral entfernten Polen von Hochkultur und Entertainment, abseits von akademischen Zugängen wie auch den unerbittlichen Gesetzen des Marktes, warten die aufregendsten Entdeckungen.

Dort, zwischen den Stühlen, drehen Regisseure wie Nicolas Winding Refn, David Lynch oder Jonathan Glazer eigenwillige Filme, die weder den Regeln des Arthouse-Ghettos noch des Kommerzbetriebs gehorchen, dort tüfteln Musiker wie Radiohead, Björk oder Nick Cave an ihren störrischen Liedern, die dennoch mit der flirrenden Energie des Pop flirten, dort trifft man aufregende Autoren, Designer oder Comiczeichner.

Auch der in Wien lebende Fotograf Bernd Preiml haust in diesem Niemandsland der Kreativität, in dem strenge Kritikerpuristen manchmal genauso straucheln wie die Erfüllungsgehilfen der Massenmedien. Wie bei den genannten und etlichen anderen Grenzgängern des künstlerischen Ausdrucks treffen in seinen Bildern scheinbar unvereinbare Gegensätze aufeinander. Geht das Hässliche mit dem Glamour eine Liason ein. Liegen Verstörung und Betörung eng beieinander. Braucht es nicht aufdringliche Konzepte oder aufgeplusterte Manifeste, um die Arbeiten theoretisch aufzuwerten.

Der Weg, der Preiml letztlich in die beschriebene Twilight Zone führt, beginnt in Jugendjahren, in einer schummrigen Videothek in seinem steirischen Heimatort. Es sind nicht immer die schundigen, schillernden Machwerke des Exploitation- und Horrorkinos, die den damals blutjungen Besucher fesseln. Sondern die vielfältigen, herrlich plakativen Versprechungen auf den dazugehörigen Verpackungen. Die grellen Covergestaltungen faszinieren Bernd Preiml, lassen ihn zum Filmsammler werden, der unzählige VHS-Kassetten hortet. Der dunkle Sog der Popkultur erfasst ihn, ersetzt den Kunstunterricht, treibt ihn in die fiebrige Nähe außenseiterischer Filmemacher, Musiker und Maler.

Bernd Preiml, das kristalliert sich bald für ihn bald heraus, will allerdings nicht epigonenhaft auf den zertrampelten Pfaden anderer Bilderstürmer wandern. Vage inspiriert von exzentrischen Kunstrebellen folgt er seinen eigenen düsteren Visionen. Er probiert vielfältige Techniken aus, experimentiert mit digitalen Möglichkeiten ebenso wie mit handfesten Materialien, treibt sich auch im Terrain der Mode- und Werbefotografie herum.

Gegenwärtig sind es nicht mehr Expeditionen in echte oder artifizielle Landschaften, die den Fotokünstler reizen. Es ist die eigene Wohnung, der Abfall im Mistkübel, der Staub, der sich in Zimmerecken sammelt, der ihn anzieht. Fast könnte man seine Kunst mit einem Neobiedermeier in Verbindung bringen, weil Preiml scheinbar keine Lust mehr hat, seine engste Umgebung zu verlassen, weil er den Kontakt mit dem Außen zunehmend scheut und als Models oft nur Frau und Kind ins Bild rückt.

Aber die seltsamen maskierten Wesen auf seinen neuen Bildern passen nicht zu den sterilen Idyllen der urbanen Bohemien-Gesellschaft. Wenn Bernd Preiml von privaten Rückzugsgebieten spricht, dann spuken dort auch immer Geister herum, manifestieren sich die Schattenseiten der Wegwerfgesellschaft in gespenstischer Form. Gleichzeitig verbindet den Fotografen, der seit den erwähnten pubertären Videothekenbesuchen eine fetischistische Liebe zum Müll, zum Unrat, zum Dreck in allen Varianten hegt, eine innige Zuneigung mit

seinen Monstren. Der Betrachter spürt dieses ambivalente Verhältnis. Und bemerkt: Wahre Schönheit wird oft erst aus dem Schmutz geboren.

Christian Fuchs

Beautiful Dirt: Notes on Bernd Preiml

Thoughts on the exhibition „Mega Bliss“ by Christian Fuchs

If you are looking for exciting artistic expressions in the here and now, you are most likely to find them in a diffuse border area. In this undefined zone between the diametrically distant poles of high culture and entertainment, away from academic approaches as well as the relentless laws of the market, the most exciting discoveries await. There, between the chairs, directors such as Nicolas Winding Refn, David Lynch or Jonathan Glazer make idiosyncratic films that obey neither the rules of the arthouse ghetto nor the commercial business, there musicians like Radiohead, Björk or Nick Cave tinker with their stubborn songs, which nevertheless flirt with the shimmering energy of pop, there you meet exciting authors, designers or comic artists.

The Vienna-based photographer Bernd Preiml also lives in this no-man’s-land of creativity, where strict critic purists sometimes stumble just as much as the vicarious agents of the mass media.

As with the aforementioned and many other border crossers of artistic expression, seemingly irreconcilable opposites meet in his artworks. The ugly enters into a liason with the glamour. Disturbance and beguilement are close together. Doesn’t it take intrusive concepts or puffed-up manifestos to theoretically enhance the works.

The path that ultimately leads Preiml to the Twilight Zone described above begins in his youth, in a dimly lit video store in his Styrian hometown. It is not always the disgraceful, dazzling works of exploitation and horror cinema that captivate the then very young visitor. But the diverse, wonderfully striking promises on the associated packaging. Bernd Preiml is fascinated by the garish cover designs and turns him into a film collector who collects countless VHS tapes.

The dark maelstrom of pop culture takes hold of him, replaces art lessons, drives him into the feverish vicinity of outsider filmmakers, musicians and painters. Bernd Preiml, it soon becomes clear to him, does not want to wander epigone-like on the trampled paths of other iconoclasts. Vaguely inspired by eccentric art rebels, he follows his own dark visions. He tries out a variety of techniques, experiments with digital possibilities as well as with tangible materials, and also drifts around in the terrain of fashion and advertising photography.

At present, it is no longer expeditions into real or artificial landscapes that appeal to the photographic artist. It is his own apartment, the garbage in the trash can, the dust that collects in the corners of his room that attracts him. One could almost associate his art with a neo-Biedermeier, because Preiml seems to have no desire to leave his closest environment, because he increasingly shies away from contact with the outside and, as models, often only brings his own family into the picture.

But the strange masked creatures in his new images do not fit in with the sterile idylls of urban bohemian society. When Bernd Preiml speaks of private retreats, there are always ghosts haunting them, and the dark side of the throwaway society manifests itself in ghostly form. At the same time, the photographer, who has had a fetishistic love of garbage, rubbish, dirt in all its forms since the aforementioned pubescent video store visits, has a deep affection for his monsters. The viewer senses this ambivalent relationship.

And noticed:

True beauty is often born out of the dirt.