Olaf Breuning (1970, Schaffhausen, Switzerland).
Lives and works in New York.

Olaf Breuning is a multimedia artist known for his impressive pictorial worlds and his ironic views on a reality that is shaped by the media.

After studying photography at the Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Olaf Breuning made a name for himself through a multi-layered oeuvre that questions contemporary reality.

Through a wide variety of media and art forms spanning from sculpture, painting and drawing to film, installation, photography, and music artist investigates kitsch, appropriation, cliché, popular culture and collective visual iconography.

Breuning’s works are usually comprised of bright colors and are influenced by a number of diverse and eclectic sources, humorously reflecting his observation of human behavior together with cultural and political concerns.

In ‘The Art Freaks’, a series of 2011 color photographs, Breuning painted nude models’ bodies to evoke the signature styles of influential 20th-century artists like Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock and On Kawara, questioning our relationship to supposed “masterpieces”, as well as our mediated experience of them through reproductions.

Artist has participated in various prestigious public projects, including City Hall Park exhibition ‘Lightness of Being’ (2013), Happening of Station to station (2013), Miami Art Basel (2013). His Central Park installation ‘Clouds’ (2014), gave a highlight of color to the park, with its bright-blue aluminum clouds, held 35 feet above the ground.

“Well, I would like to be perfect, but I think art shows me that whatever technology I use, my personality pushes through and there we are… something is not perfect. I like that. We are finally human.”

Artist’s works are in the collections of many prestigious museums and galleries worldwide, including:
AROS (Aarhus, Denmark)
Fonds National D’art Contemporain (Paris, France)
Kunsthalle Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany)
Kunsthaus Glarus (Glarus, Switzerland)
Kunsthaus Zürich (Zürich, Switzerland)
Louisiana Museum (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Musée d’Art Moderne/Centre de Création Industrielle (Paris, France)
Museum zu Allerheiligen (Schaffhausen, Switzerland)
Sammlung Falkenberg (Hamburg, Germany)
UBS Collection (Zurich, Switzerland)
Sammlung Goetz (München, Germany)