September 8, 2011 |
Oh, that Olaf. Or since we’ve never met, maybe Mr Breuning is more appropriate. But we feel like we know him. We’re big fans here at 10, if we were artists we’d love to be him, or failing that, be his intern. Because Mr Breuning bigs up his interns, he’s known for it. We like that very much and we also like the shoot he did with Sabina Schreder for the Art Issue of 10. To find out more, head to a newsstand. To read more about Olaf Breuning look below.
1. Breuning’s work spans film, photography, performance and installation. He creates narratives of B-Movie high kitsch, the monsters, played by friends, are human sculptures with painted skin and cardboard costumes, grotesque, humorous and ultimately harmless.
2. Olaf Breuning provides a welcome antidote to the common misconception that the Swiss have no sense of humour.
3. In Bred vs Potato, 2006, food is transformed by the addition of shiny plastic eyes into a carbohydrate army emerging from under a sideboard and caught mid-progression across the floor of the gallery.
4. Stills feature comically plaintive phrases, “Why can’t you be nice to nature? What is wrong with you?” and “Can someone tell us why we are here?”
5. Breuning’s film series Home features a character who moves though a series of odd global encounters unable to fit in with any of them, celebrating strange interaction and a glorious kind of antisocial behavior.
6. Other, seemingly self-explanatory works such as Mr Hand, Mrs Ass, Mrs Knee and Mr Foot, 2004, operate as perfectly crafted visual one-liners.
7. His entertaining website is well worth a visit. Highlights include the Blogdragon, which features his favourite bloggers as the many heads of a dragon, with links to all their sites and his online store.
8. Hatje Catz published a book on his work, named Ugly, in 2000. This was followed by Home, 2004, and Queen Mary, 2006 both published by JPR/Ringier.
9. Breuning is prolific and has been involved in too many exhibitions to name here, including solo shows at Nils Staerk Gallery, Australian Centre for Photography, Sketch in London, Air du Paris and Metro Pictures and the Swiss Institute in New York and group shows at the Tate Modern, MoMA, the Hayward Gallery, the Whitney and Centre For Contemporary Arts in Berlin.
10. His work can currently be seem at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in his solo exhibition The Art Freaks, on until the 31st of December.
by Zoe Wulfsohn-Dunkley
