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Monograph featuring works from 2001 to 2004

Olaf Breuning’s work use state-of-the-art technology with shock effects from the entertainment industry or the high-gloss quality of advertising. His videos feed off clichés from the media and popular culture and are simultaneously “failed” and accomplished, creating a universe of artificial realities and quoted artificialities. In the large-format photographs that Breuning often displays in conjunction with his installations and performances, the visible method of construction is similarly an equally essential component of the given composition.

“In the process,” affirms Philipp Kaiser, “the borders between high art and pop art are entirely erased. Diverse symbolic worlds flow into one another without their elements claiming recognition as quotations. This ‘zapping’ produces images that are new at first glance, yet also seem familiar. His photographs, however, attempt neither to postulate a rigid and autonomous counter-world nor to expose existing images as a surrogate reality.”

In his interviews Breuning often cites as influences Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney’s early work, and filmmakers such as John Carpenter and John Waters.

Born in 1970, Breuning lives in New York and Zurich. Solo exhibitions between 2001 and 2004 include the Swiss Institute in New York, Artspace in Auckland (Australia), Museo Garilla Gil in Mexico, the Kunstverein in Freiburg, and his main galleries in Paris, New York, Zurich, and Berlin.

The book is published in collaboration with the Le Magasin, Grenoble, and the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain of Strasbourg, both of which held solo exhibitions by the artist in 2003.