Underneath the Wings of a Butterfly

Underneath the Wings of a Butterfly is a journey where we follow a butterfly through a contemporary mask of happiness.

This mask is shiny and golden, plastic and metal – but behind it is a world where nature is decaying, climate is drastically changing, the fever of revolution is boiling and the planet we live on is reinventing itself. The experience invites you to rediscover this world and plant seeds from the past, in order to contribute to a hopeful future. Abner Preis is an artist and storyteller who conveys a hopeful message with his colourful, humorous and critical installations. He combines simple drawings and cheerful, collage-like backgrounds with experience and interaction in digital worlds.

For Underneath the Wings of a Butterfly, Abner developed an Augmented Reality installation where the participant is lead by an augmented butterfly through a world that is influenced by humans, but eventually gets taken over by technological butterflies, bees and low poly flowers. The AR installation provides access to a world where urgent issues such as climate change, the refugee crisis, economic recession and consumerism become almost tangible.

Abner Preis is a story-teller whose work is rooted in personal aspirations to give one hope in a situation that seems hopeless, to transfer the ability to laugh at sadness, and to seduce viewers into seeing beauty in bleak objects by offering compositions that play to emotion before aesthetics. What his extensive research, sensitivity and awareness provide is the simple and extremely difficult ability to tell a story with visuals that can be felt before they are understood. You can take it in at first glance, but generally don’t bargain for what happens once you’ve opened the door. What you see is what you get. There’s just a whole lot stacked beneath that.