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5/12/2002

Olaf Breuning

ArsFutura Galerie, Zurich

Opening: 6 December 2002, 6 - 9 pm

arsFutura Gallery is pleased to announce the solo show by Swiss artist Olaf Breuning* (*1970, lives and works in New York and Zurich). In his photographs, Olaf Breuning conjures up the ghosts of pop and guides us through a fictional world of drowsy memories. His photographs feature strangely frozen moments in time, scenes of stories whose circumstances and evolution are suspected challenges for audience participation.

For one more time the enthusiast directs an irritating cross-section of modern society. The dramas of human theatre are all represented and the props of paraphernalia are found, among other things, on the internet- the collective memory of modern society.

For these works, attention is drawn towards the banal leisure amenities of metropolitans and the undisguised images of frivolous desires. Breuning portrays scenes of modern vampires provoking a mysteriously stimulating shiver with in the viewer. Imaginary ancestors stare into space from a pseudo-prehistorical diorama. This bizarre family portrait is put into a surreal light. This is portrayed by the blurred colour of old photographs that has been smeared across the bodies of the long ago deceased protagonists.

Lean skeletons appear almost like invisible ghosts making themselves at home in a clinic-like world. Hippies and a freak-terrorist, whose origin remains a mystery for once, offer opposition to the prevailing social structure. Thus illustrated by the lone deserted photograph reveals traces of madness in an abandoned forest. Would these pictures be found as singular documents of our time in the far-off future? Would an iconographic interpretation capture the ambivalent atmosphere set up in Breuning’s photographs in an astonishingly precise way?

Olaf Breuning’s modern legends are derived from the world of TV, advertising, cinema and art. The signs and codes of everyday culture are mounted in strange pictorial surrogates. They aim at paradox interpretations and provoke genuinely human fears. The perfect productions harmonise with the beautiful appearances of the suggestive force of consumerism. Without being totally aware of them they appeal to our desires and fears.

The focus is always on the spectacle and the seduction of the effect. At the same time the clichés are slightly undermined by making the artificiality of the production visibly transparent. The strange happenings of our society’s promises are revealed mercilessly without abandoning the tempting game of seduction.
Text: Sabine Rusterholz, October 2002

For further pictorial material: http://www.olaf breuning.com

ARSFUTURA GALLERY, Bleicherweg 45, CH-8002 Zürich
Tel. +41 1 201 88 10 Fax +41 1 201 88 11

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