We only move wehen something changes

2002 - Photography (Photography)
122 x 155 cm

In the work We only move wehen something changes !!!, Olaf Breuning composes a portrait of posed antiglobalization protesters, each wearing clown noses, inside of a scene reminiscent of an event. Like in the work Easter Bunnies (2004) (photographs of the Moai of Easter Island with big ears and rabbit teeth supported by scaffolding) the artist introduces the outside frame into his photographic frame. The detail of the red noses, that punctuate the image, re-examine the photograph’s meaning by introducing the role of the absurd inside of contemporary global issues. At once critical and playful, Breuning doesn’t alienate his subjects. The young anti-globalization activists are not impaired. Instead, they are shot or snapped in a moment of confusion, which is equally shared by Olaf Breuning himself. The spelling mistake of ‘when’ creates a supplementary text of a subtext. “Wehen” in German signifies the act of floating in the wind and the pains of childbirth. A linguistic slip surprisingly in tune with the subject of the image, the photograph evokes youth’s generational gap torn between the uncertainties and desires of action.

Olaf Breuning’s photographs, videos, performances and installations play with codes of mass production with references to publicity, fashion and cinema and “high” and “low” art. Between fiction and reality, fairytales and triviality, nightmare and bad jokes, the artist immerses his viewers decidedly into a pop and kitsch culture which is constantly being revisited. His works, made up by quotations, collages, and sampling are highly built. Often hyper-aestheticized, they work as “script-machines” reminiscent of special effects from the film industry. The artist frequently holds up a distorting mirror to his viewer, posing several questions of critique and play. Olaf Breuning was born in 1970 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. He lives and works in New York and Zurich.

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