Martha Jungwirth * (born in Vienna in 1940) Untitled, from the series "Kambodscha", signed, dated Martha Jungwirth 2005, watercolour on paper, 101 x 137 cm, framed Color dominates in Jungwirth’s works. In other words: her watercolors are nothing but color. Color is her Alpha and Omega. It is the bearer of emotion, summons it, produces it, and is able to preserve it. Color evokes memory, calls it forth, and merges with it. Color, as Jungwirth once said, stands for the “remaining 20% of perception”. All that once was and was present in a moment of ultimate compression is expressed in color. The reduction of a visual experience to color causes the colors to intensify, become more concentrated, more isolated. In Jungwirth’s works, all colors are colors of memory, but infinitely increased. The artist’s sensitivity for the interaction of colors is nothing short of a miracle. You have to see it and see it again to believe it is possible. The magic of color captivates us if we look at the large-format watercolors that reflect the visual experiences in Burma and Cambodia. These experiences, touching, if not merging completely with each other in the memory, appear, as is always the case with Jungwirth, reduced to their colorful core. In the colors, the uplifting and the bitter, pleasure and pain, become inseparable. Wieland Schmied from: Der unwiederholbare Augenblick, der nicht vergehen soll. Catalogue: Martha Jungwirth. Tür zu, Galerie Exner, Vienna, 2005 “Das Malen ist eine körperliche, konzentrierte Aktivität, eine einmalige Setzung, ich übermale selten etwas, entweder es stimmt oder es stimmt nicht – meistens stimmt es.“ Martha Jungwirth, 2015 Katalog: Martha Jungwirth, Albertina, Wien 2018 "Painting is a physical, concentrated activity. Its outcomes are binary: I rarely paint over something; either it's right or it's not (usually it's right)". Martha Jungwirth, 2015 Catalogue: Martha Jungwirth, Albertina, Vienna 2018