Notes

 Alexis Preller’s approach to subject matter is often fugue-like where a form or idea is engaged with and repeated again and again, echoing in evocative poetic sequences through a series of works over decades. During Preller’s stay in the Seychelles between 1948 and 1949, he made a collection of shells which became the subject of a series of small paintings produced at Beau Vallon, and which were later exhibited in Pretoria upon his return.

His shell collection included a number of conus shells decorated with staccato black marks along their conical, curved surfaces. These in time became structural prototypes for the emblematic human figure, most notably in his famous work Hieratic Women of 1955, housed at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG). Preller’s transformation of the shell into the futuristic blanket-clad figure alludes to his understanding, conscious or unconscious, of the surrealist’s use of the objet trouvé, an ordinary object transformed into an extraordinary image.

Twenty years separate Hieratic Women (1955) and the two versions of Undeciphered, Computerised Message (1975). All these works reflect Preller’s ability to conjure with an object, poetically transforming it into a figure or merely interpreting the shell as an inherently beautiful object with symbolic potential and the possibility of a deeply encoded message. Preller’s 1940s world had changed dramatically technologically by the 1970s, from Morse code and tickertape to computer code. The title of this painting, Undeciphered, Computerised Message, alludes to this new world where coded information moves at unimaginable speed. It is from this point and this lens that Preller relooks and re-assesses the syncopated graphic marks of the conus shell, and considers its seemingly mysterious digitised message.

The graded aquamarine background of the painting and the small glowing golden sun allude to the shell’s origin from the distant east African coastline. The typically Prelleresque spiked dark green forms that emerge from behind the shell have a palm frond-like quality that is further referenced by the small spray of stiff zig-zag-like stems with pink palm fruits.

Two works, Undeciphered, Computerised Message I and II, were hung alongside another pair of shell-inspired works, Tower of Babel I and II, on his final 1975 exhibition at Goodman Gallery in Hyde Park. In these two paintings, Preller uses another type of spiralling shell to evoke the Biblical references to the great middle eastern image of the ramped tower of Babel. It is both inspiring and touching at the end of Preller’s life to see the same modest objects used and reused to evoke a reverence for the small and ordinary and to conjure with ideas that so profoundly engage the immensity of the mythological and philosophical.

Esmé Berman and Karel Nel. (2009) Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows, Johannesburg, Shelf Publishing.

Esmé Berman and Karel Nel. (2009) Alexis Preller: Collected Images, Johannesburg, Shelf Publishing

Karel Nel, 2017

We are grateful to Professor Karel Nel, co-author of Alexis Preller, A Visual Biography for this catalogue entry.

Exhibited

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Alexis Preller: Solo Exhibition, 12 to 29 November 1975, catalogue number 7 (or 8).

Literature

cf. Esmé Berman and Karel Nel. (2009) Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows, Johannesburg: Shelf Publishing. A similar example is illustrated in colour on page 320.