Olaf Breuning

  • Olaf Breuning

    January 29 – February 27, 2010
    MELLEMRUMMET, NY CARLSBERGVEJ 68, COPENHAGEN

    During February 2010 we will be showing new sculptures, photographs and a wall painting by Olaf Breuning in our exhibition space Mellemrummet. The exhibition corresponds with a feature about the artist in ArtNews. The sculptures and the wall painting are based on Olaf Breuning’s pencil drawings. Little everyday concerns that in Breuning’s artistic, and often humorous, expression appear paradoxically serious, existentialist, and, in some cases, even melancholic.

     

    The sculptures are constructed in black, painted wood, which keep them in a direct relationship to their source as drawings. With its broad graphic strokes the wall painting exhibits the same reference to its origin. The three photographic works at the exhibition show a relation to the sculptures. A simple grid structure constructed of white painted wood is exposed to paint that is sprayed, dropped and spit - and then, photographed. Taking the emblematic modernist structure of the grid as his point of departure, as well as working with paint, Breuning investigates the boundaries and possibilities between the two media.

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  • OLAF BREUNING Born in Schaffhausen, CH, 1970 Lives and works in New York, USA Olaf Breuning (b. 1970, Schaffhausen, Switzerland)...

    OLAF BREUNING

    Born in Schaffhausen, CH, 1970
    Lives and works in  New York, USA

     

    Olaf Breuning (b. 1970, Schaffhausen, Switzerland) lives and works in New York. Breuning works in different mediums including photography, drawing, sculpture, video, and installation. In his work Breuning explores the boundaries between fact and fiction, where art becomes a part of life and not as an isolated world that unfolds in parallel with the rest of society.

     

    At first sight, Breuning’s humoristic self-irony may appear simplified and accessible, but when you look closer his works are deep and complex. Breuning mixes elements from high and low culture, where canonical works from art history stand side by side with phenomena from popular culture. In an eclectic manner, he identifies elements from Western visual culture and stages them anew - often with an absurd or humorous twist. In other words, Breuning embeds reflections on the lifestyle and consumerism of today’s Western society in his works. Breuning has been shown at NRW Forum Düsseldorf, DE; The Public Art Fund, Firedman Plaza, New York, US; Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, ICA London, UK; PS1 MOMA, New York, US; Migros Musum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, CH; Haus der Kunst, Munich, DE; Tinguely Museum, Basel, CH.

     
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