Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. Texts by Elsy Lahner, Brett Littman.
Olaf Breuning: Drawings offers a comprehensive catalog of the drawings of Swiss-born, New York–based artist Olaf Breuning (born 1970) made over the past 20 years. Described by Roberta Smith as “the joking sculptor,” Breuning is known for his videos, sculptures, installations and photo-collages which explore kitsch, cliché and popular culture in deliberately eclectic processes and forms. The artist has collaborated with the Public Art Fund, the LUMA Foundation and Art Basel on large public installations in New York, Gstaad and Miami, respectively, but he is also at home with the more intimate scale of the sketchbook page.
Breuning’s drawings, presented in this volume accompanied by texts from Elsy Lahner and Brett Littman, represent the artist’s most concentrated engagement with the ideas and concerns that drive his larger practice, and thus offer an intriguing perspective on his work.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Olaf Breuning.
On a journey from England to New York, aboard of the Queen Mary II cruiser, Olaf Breuning made 73 drawings, laced with the references to popular culture and consumerism found in his multimedia installations, photography and videos. These themes are concentrated in Breuning's drawings, which are also characterized by a spirit of humor and subversion.
Most viewers will associate the Swiss artist Olaf Breuning with high-production-value film and photography projects, not low-tech, pointedly handmade work like these sketches. But on a recent trip from England to New York on board the ship The Queen Mary II, he sat down and made 73 direct, powerful and funny drawings. They combine memory with daydream, humor and subversion, and they concentrate the references to media, popular culture, and consumer dreams that appear in his multimedia work. Anthropomorphized lipsticks smile out and cute little mushroom clouds swirl up. So do fireworks, and a "Comfort Dragon" uses his many arms to carry a cell phone, radio, coffeepot and plant. Breuning's solo exhibition venues have included the Swiss Institute and Metro Pictures in New York, as well as other international galleries and museums.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Lionel Bovier. Essays by Inge Lindner-Gaillard and Brian Kerstetter.
Swiss artist Olaf Breuning's videos revel hilariously in adolescent antics and pop culture. In a recent work, Wayne's World types don masks, eat dog food, and throw m&m's at pets, and in another segment, a gang invades Amish country, strips a passerby, pulls a mask over his head, and chases him into the woods. Like Mike Kelley before him, Breuning seeks not just to erase the line between our media-saturated world of film and television and high art, but to blow it to smithereens. That doesn't mean he isn't thoughtful and thought provoking: Inventive composition and technical mastery inform all his pieces, whether videos or large-format photographs. Inspired by Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney's early work, and filmmakers such as John Carpenter and John Waters, Breuning has learned both how to get a laugh (and a scream) and to plumb the deeper human comedy (and horror).
Published by Hatje Cantz. Essays by Christopher Doswald, Gianni Jetzer, Markus Stegmann, Dorothea Strauss, Philip Vergne.
Films, television, advertising, video clips, and computer games--all are fair game and useful material for Swiss artist Olaf Breuning. In his photographs, videos, and installations, Breuning engages with the reality of the vast array of media that surround us incessantly, day in and day out, appropriating narratives, images, and characters to create unforgettable and eerily familiar hybrids. Through unlikely medleys that juxtapose such disparate elements as the accoutrements of occultism, new-age fads, and vampire films, mixing together disgust, sweetness, kitsch, horror, levity, and gravity, Breuning shows that nothing is too sacred or profane to warrant inclusion in one of his playful, weirdly subtle compositions.
Olaf Breuning: Queen Mary II
Olaf Breuning: Queen Mary
Olaf Breuning: Home
Olaf Breuning: Ugly