Olaf Breuning

Olaf Breuning takes B-movie kitsch to a whole different alphabetical scale, somewhere way past Z. Appropriating the tropes of slasher flicks and music videos, Breuning's films are riotous masterpieces of pop culture pastiche, reconstructing the weirdness and violence of zombie, satanic cult, and science fiction genres with homebrew efficacy. Executed on ultra-low budget, Breuning's works are shamelessly amateur: set in found locations, starring friends rather than actors, with costumes and props fabricated from bargain shop materials, and the technical 'achievement' of special effects revealed as the hopeful illusions of flashlights or plainly visible smoke machines. Breuning's photographs operate as out-takes from his videos. Playing on the cult status horror of The Blair Witch Project or The Wickerman, Cat -- a make-shift totem of a vicious-looking kitty -- harks to a supernatural forest ritual, more dumb than frightening.