Breuning's woodcut paintings are created through an intuitive process to retain the raw quality of the materials. Both paintings and sculptures are created with or out of wood, and the use of nature in the works enables the works to talk about nature: the relationship between humans and nature, how we use and control it.
Olaf Breuning, born in Switzerland, 1970. Lives in New York

By juxtaposing reality and illusion, authenticity and artifice, barbarism and civility, Olaf Breuning creates photographs, films, sculptures, paintings and installations that draw heavily from popular culture and a collective visual iconography. He combines these contemporary aesthetics with more primal shared drives: violence, sexuality, ritual, and companionship. The divergent impulses collide, often with absurd and hilarious results, as Breuning exploits the thin line between humor and pain.