OLAF BREUNING
October 19, 2003 – January 4, 2004
Curator: Yves Aupetitallot

Olaf Breuning’s exhibition brings together an important set of works (film, video clips) organised around two of his main installations ‘Hello Darkness’ (2002) and ‘Apes’ (2001).

‘Apes’, shown for the first time at the Kunstverein Friburg, reminds the viewer of a film set or the scenery for an anthropological reconstruction of the prehistoric age. In the darkness, the set of soil planted with trees and shrubs shelters different groups of big apes, man’s supposed ancestors, who are illuminated from time to time by the flames of the fire around which they are grouped.

The installation ‘Hello Darkness’ was shown at the Swiss Institute in New York (2002) and at Arndt & Partner gallery in Berlin (2003). It consists of a life-size sex doll lying in a coffin, holding an axe in her hand who is confronted with a life-size plastic skeleton. These elements combined with darkness, earth, a destroyed library, a fog machine, strobe lights and the melody of a mobile phone, make reference to horror and action films, clubs and pop concerts, and form a modern version of perhaps the best-known motif from medieval dances of death : Death and the Maiden.

Olaf Breuning’s works use state-of-the-art technology with shock effects from the entertainment industry. They feed off cliches from the media and popular culture, they are both ‘failed’ and accomplished, fake and in bad taste, creating a universe of artificial realities and cited artificialities.
In his interviews Olaf Breuning often cites Doug Aitken, the early works of Matthew Barney, film-makers John Carpenter and John Waters as influences.

With the support of Pro Helvetia

Olaf Breuning
He was born in 1970, in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. He lives and works in Zurich and New York.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
UGLY YELP, 2000
Video installation, dimensions vary, 6 minutes
Courtesy Ars Futura Galerie, Zürich

FIRST, 2003
Video Installation, dimensions vary, 8 minutes
Courtesy Collezione “La Gaia”, Cuneo

SKELETONS, 2002
Photograph,122 x 155 cm, C-print, mounted on aluminum and laminated
Courtesy Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zürich and Ars Futura Galerie, Zürich

VAMPIRES, 2002
Photograph,122 x 155 cm, C-print, mounted on aluminum and laminated
Courtesy Ars Futura Galerie, Zürich

CAT, 2002
Photograph,122 x 155 cm, C-print, mounted on aluminum and laminated
Courtesy Ars Futura Galerie, Zürich

DOUBLE, 2002
Photograph,122 x 155 cm, C-print, mounted on aluminum and laminated
Courtesy Ars Futura Galerie, Zürich

TIME MACHINE, 2002
Photograph,122 x 155 cm, C-print, mounted on aluminum and laminated
Courtesy Arndt & Partner, Berlin

LADY G., 2002
Photograph,122 x 155 cm, C-print, mounted on aluminum and laminated
Courtesy Arndt & Partner, Berlin

WE ONLY MOVE WEHEN SOMETHING CHANGES!!!, 2002
Photograph,122 x 155 cm, C-print, mounted on aluminum and laminated
Courtesy Arndt & Partner, Berlin

APES, 2001
Installation, dimensions vary
Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures Gallery, New York

THEY LIVE!, 1999
Photograph, 300 x 400 cm, C-print, mounted on aluminum and laminated
Courtesy Ars Futura Galerie, Zürich

KING, 2000
Video installation, dimensions vary, 9 minutes
Courtesy Air de Paris, Paris

HELLO DARKNESS, 2002
Installation, dimensions vary
Courtesy Arndt & Partner, Berlin

SKELETONS, 2002
Installation, dimensions vary
Courtesy Ars Futura Galerie, Zürich

GHOSTS, 2003
Joint project with Bernhard Willhelm
Installation, dimensions vary
Courtesy of the artist and Bernhard Willhelm

GHOSTS, 2003
Video, 5 minutes
Courtesy of the artist