Olaf Breuning at Paris Photo 2019: a few words with the artist

> Metronom: In a week time you’re going to attend the 2019 edition of Paris Photo. What are your expectations about the fair?

> Olaf Breuning: I am very happy that my work will be exhibited. Concerning my expectations about the fair? For the majority of artists, art fairs aren’t the most inspiring places to attend. As John Baldessari once stated: an artist going to an art fair is like a kid running into his parents while they’re having sex. I could not say it better.

>M: As an European-born artist living since many years in the US, how do you relate and consider the current European artistic panorama?

> OB: I left Europe twenty years ago, but I think the artistic panorama is the same all over world. There have been and there will always be artists copying other artists, artists copying art history or trying to speak their own personal and unique language. Sometimes, one of us hits the nail on the head and becomes hot and in demand, but these days this moment of fame has rather a short life span.
I think artists all over the world have one thing in common: they all talk about something they care about (whatever it is!) without having the pressure of changing art history. The ‘Mount Everest’ of art is climbed over and over and it seems that the question of how you climb it doesn’t matter anymore. The world is oversaturated with creativity. This motivates me very much to think about what this means and how the future art will look like.

>M: Do you think that the criticism hidden beneath your irony and sarcasm is usually understood and grasped by the average viewer?

>OB: No, but it doesn’t matter. Even if it’s only a small group of people getting the underlying message of my work it’s fine by me. Others might think that my work is just silly and funny, but it doesn’t move me either. I don’t produce works to make people understand something. I create works so that I can understand my life better. Very selfish.

>M: If we look at your production, examining in particular an installation such as the recent The Bosch Fridge(2019), we can see that your work originates from a combination of references from the history of art, on one hand, and the icons of Western culture, on the other. How do you balance your personal point of view with a critical approach, assuming that there is one?

>OB: I grew up in a time where criticism was a sign of an intellectual advantage. Nowadays it seems that nothing really matters anymore. There are too many voices talking and criticizing their surroundings seamlessly. My personal point of view is therefore my personal point of view and nothing more! My ultimate goal in life is to be able to look back at my path and recognize myself.
Of course, I like to criticize very much and I strive to carefully integrate that criticism into my work, but at the same time I am well aware that my voice is one out of 7 billion. And I respect that. On the other hand, I am glad when someone understands my language. It’s like making a new friend with whom you know you can share the same boat floating in the wide ocean of possibilities.

>M: Still talking about the inspirational sources of your work, it can be deducted that news and press can happen to become the main subject of a series: what can you tell us about Black Hole In My Garden(2019)?

>OB: Further evidence that proofs that nothing really matters in our time. Making a photo of a black hole seemed to be as impressive as putting the first human on the moon. But nowadays with so many recorded events daily, there are more chances to end up talking about the royal wedding instead. People have a common tool to communicate but they don’t have a common focus anymore.
A big achievement like making a photo of a black hole becomes nothing more that a chat in town. If you could understand the human effort needed to produce such an image, than you’d understand how big this moment would have been. This induced me to put a fake black hole into my garden, just to show how easy it is to make a photo of it. And here lays the treasure of fun for those who understand and get my language!

>M: We can see that photography is one of your trademark: what importance has photography within your artistic production? 

>OB: I studied 8 years photography and started my career as an artist producing large photos. It will always be my “home” medium. My “love”, if I use romantic words.

>M: In Paris you will showcase for the first time your new series Faces (2019), whose details are also featured in its homonymous volume: what is the initial idea at the base of the project? How did you get to conceive the final shape of the grid?

>OB: I joined Instagram about 6 years ago. My friends were all already using it. I did not want to be that kind of creepy guy who just follows people and doesn’t post anything. So I started to shoot faces, which was very easy and playful for me. Over the years I got more and more attention from the public. This was the clue that made me realize that I should have taken it a little bit more seriously. I have always liked faces as a side production with no goals at all. Since the very first moment I published the book, I am glad I gave this virtual series a real body.
What is more, ending up with the grid’s shape was quite an easy decision. Firstly, I did not want to excessively blow up the photos’ quality since they were taken with my iPhone. Additionally, I think they look good together as a grid. So far, I had to select from a series of over 900 photos and I am expecting more to come. The grid is a great way to present them and it allows you to choose between small or large girds with infinite possibilities of combinations of single faces. Let’s see if it might have a future concrete realization. Paris Photo 2019 is going to be the first trial!

>M: Shifting our focus on the relationship between art and communication: is Instagram influencing you practice as an artist? Additionally, what is your relationship with social networks?

>OB: Like the majority of people at the present moment, I more and more often find myself thinking ‘oh my, how did that happen?’. The first iPhone was presented by Steve Jobs only twelve years ago. Nowadays we cannot live without it anymore. At the same time Instagram and social media in general have become our tool to communicate. We all use it but I guess we don’t really have time to sit back and think about it. By now you already have to face a hard choice to decide if you want to be ‘In’ or ‘Out’. Within the creative world it is easy to notice big changes in fields such as professional photography, advertising and in the art world in general. It is highly interesting what might happen in the nearest future.
At the same time, I do often think about the past and ask myself ‘how was it when I arrived in New York twenty years ago? Were people really walking in the streets without staring at their phones?’ And I can’t remember if that was any better. Internet brought several advantages, but a simultaneous and general loss of qualities. I guess it has always been the same drill with each technical revolution that has happened in the past. And we are definitely right in the middle of the new one.
In conclusion, I think we just need some time to settle down a little and sort things out. But maybe there is just no time to do that since the speed of things seems not to go any slower any sooner. Well, the good fact is that only the 40% of the world population is online. It sounds quite an unbelievable thing for us, the iPhone junkies.

© Olaf Breuning / Courtesy METRONOM

6/11/2019