Olaf Breuning

Anyone who thinks that Olaf Breuning’s Cat is a fictive creature, and perhaps a tad out of the ordinary, would change their mind after seeing Breuning’s 1999 film Woodworld, a lo-budget, hi-sci-fi extravaganza that makes Slava Tsukerman’s 1982 Liquid Sky look like a masterpiece.

In this dark forest, where ghostly lights waltz to the sounds of the Nutcracker Suite and tiny alien spacecraft flash through patches of fog belched regularly by machines (it has to be said that Breuning is brilliant at Special Defects), Cat would appear as a thoroughly ordinary forest dweller, at one with the supernatural spirits which inhabit the trees (in a related work, the trees actually grumble and complain).

At home here, too, would be Breuning’s Collage Family, who have suddenly appeared, fully unformed, with their addled brains and rickety frames stuffed with broken fragments of pop culture.

For critic Travis Jeppesen, the very meaninglessness is the message: “Breuning's art reflects the shallowness and veiled lunacy of the everyday, and the ease with which it may be disrupted, if only the effort could be made.”

Text by William A Ewing