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Fire, Water, Earth, Pain

Fire, Water, Earth, Pain

Urška Preis 2025 Slovenia

Snimka zaslona 2026-08-16 122942

Ogenj, voda, zemlja, bol – Urška Preis

Fire, Water, Earth and Pain is an intermedia exhibition that approaches the concept of pain as a fundamental natural state. In line with the themes, the materials used are either natural – biodegradable or recycled. The exhibition includes outdoor metal works and a glass aquarium, as well as found objects, large-scale knitting (made by the artist), wax remnants, compositions made from field recordings of natural materials and play with them – all set in an installation of five DIY speakers with a metal plate. It is of great importance to respect the morality and ethics of the author and the concept when creating an artwork.


Through three interwoven spatial installations, the artist creates an environment in which she positions the concept of pain as a process force that transcends binary divisions between the human and the natural, between the subject and the environment. In this context, the exhibition starts from the premise that pain is not simply a somatic or phenomenological experience, but is constituted as a material-discursive process expressed in transitions between the material and the sensory, the individual and the collective, which arises within a network of relationships between natural substances, bodies and the environment.

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Urška Preis

Urška Preis (1992, Ljubljana) is an intermedia artist, musician, composer, curator and writer. They graduated with honors from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2021 with a master’s degree in photography, and received the Prešeren Student Award UL ALUO for their master’s thesis. In 2022, they published their first art book, Bôli. They have participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at Moderna galerija, the Photonic Moments festival, the Museum of Architecture and Design, and MSUM+.

In October 2021, they presented their intermedia author’s project Forgetting Pavlo Debeljak, while in March 2022, as part of the Red Dawn festival, they held their solo AV exhibition Dolores. At the end of 2025, they presented a solo project Fire, Water, Earth, Pain at the Galerija Tkalka gallery, funded by the Slovenian Ministry of Culture. They are also the winner of the residency program of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia in New York City for June 2026.