For Olaf Breuning’s third solo exhibition with Carbon 12, ‘Brainwashed by Nature’, Breuning unveils new, conceptual paintings that venture back to nature, and the pressing environmental concerns we face today. Our human race, no longer truly living in the present but in the past and future, have constantly paid a blind eye to the consequences of our actions - until recent years.
By using elements found within nature to discuss nature itself, Breuning's rough landscapes incorporate the usage of woodcut slices to explore the foreseeable circumstances of mankind’s detrimental actions. The return to a simpler, more primitive state of production contrasts faster, more industrialized methods of creating art. This mirrors a perspective Olaf Breuning may want us to consider: that leaner, meaner, and more technologically advanced do not necessarily mean that it is better.
Breuning has never lost irony through his skilful ultra-simplification, never straying from the direct visual language that spans across all his works since the early 90s. While delving into concerns of rapid climate change and global warming, Breuning approaches these complex issues as a master aesthetic-maker. His vast, visually turbulent compositions are reminiscent of weather maps; various meteorological elements in constant disarray, shifting across an unknown, unsuspecting region. An unfolding sense of turmoil is captured here, in their striking hues of colour, and their deliberate disarrangement of the woodcut gesso prints - and somewhere within this organized chaos, he communicates a positive perspective, despite an otherwise grim future that is alluded to.
Our stance as a distant observer posits the question: What would it take for us to finally assume honest responsibility for the battered state of the nature that surrounds us? Our relationship with mother earth may have once been symbiotic, and Breuning asks for us to re-consider our habits from the past, and their problems attached, to make way for a return to a more sustainable, and harmonious way of life.
Interview with Olaf Breuning
How does this new body of work touch back to works made previously, such as Clouds (2014) and Mother Nature (2018)?
I hope these new paintings will be a logical addition to my previous works. Painting has always been in my mind and I’ve made many attempts in the past, which unfortunately always failed. This time, I hope, it will work. I’m very confident and happy about the new body of work.
What is the process behind these new woodcut paintings?
I take a chainsaw and cut a large piece out from a tree trunk, then I carve a drawing or sign into the flat part of the wood, and after, I paint them with a brush and lift them (some of them are very heavy) onto the canvas to make the print. The nice wood shapes I keep in the studio and put it on a shelf, the rest I burn in my wood stove so that I dont end up on a big mountain of wood. At the same time, I heat my studio with it. It’s a full cycle that makes sense to me. It’s physically hard work!
How would you portray our relationship to nature and the environment, and how do those thoughts surface in your practice?
We are nature and we often forget that. We seem to walk on very thin ice with our self-made technological surroundings, unaware that this is a fragile construction which could break any time and set us back to fundamental surviving skills. My work always talked about the relationship between human created technology and nature.
Could you offer an insight into the title, “Brainwashed by Nature”?
Since I am more exposed to nature with having my studio in middle of the forest, I started to observe the relationship between highly advanced humans and slow moving nature. Before, I was living always in cities, closer to technology and farther away from nature. Now, in being surrounded by greenery, mother nature slowly put her foot into my brain. Also, I’m getting older and the decay of myself is more obvious. Another call from nature, something you might not even think about when you are young.
Could you explain your intentions behind the structure of these compositions and the scenes they evoke?
The intention of the structure is mostly emotional. I shuffle the woodblocks around until it looks right. As for the story, I think it has to be really primitive and simple as the wood block paintings themselves. But, all the paintings are about possible freak behaviors of nature, occurrences that don’t bode well for us.
What was the conceptual significance behind incorporating cut trees to coat the canvas?
This was a quite simple concept: I wanted to use nature to talk about nature. I felt somehow connected to the materials because they were heavy and rough, and it takes a physical involvement with nature in order to do the paintings. It wouldn’t be the same if I would just use a brush and a white canvas - and by the way I wouldn’t be able to do that. I’m not a hardcore painter!
What are your thoughts on the man-made/machine-made and their influence on the environment, and how are those thoughts reflected in your works?
I have a huge admiration for man-made discoveries and at the same time, I feel frightened about it. In the last 100 years, we've achieved so much, from a technological point of view. We are in a "gold rush" of technology today, and new discoveries are made now, more than ever. It’s exciting and mind blowing to see what we are able to do. The last century was more or less based on burning fuels like oil, coal and gas, and by now we figured out (not all of us!) that it’s not good for the environment. We’re forced to do something, to change things. One positive thing in all the negative is, that with all the energy we digged out of the ground, we’re now able to create technologies to produce powerful solar panels and windmills and other green efforts to harvest renewable energies. It seems that the whole industrial revolution, and what came after, paved the way to where we are today. We are now without doubt able to produce efficient enough tools to take advantage of all this “free” power. It’s ironic, but I do hope that we can turn things around for the sake of our future. Global warming is sad and bad, but now is definitely the time to change things, and we can. There is no debating about it, and whoever does, is an idiot.
With the world just recently becoming more environmentally conscious, what are you seeking to contribute to that conversation with your paintings?
Nothing really! I do them because I want to talk about things I care. I want to make them attractive so that I would love to hang them in my own living room. My real contribution is more my daily life. For example, getting rid of oil heating in the house, installing solar panels on the roof, driving an electric car, etc. All just small steps in hopefully the right direction. The contemporary consciousness about the environment will shape things sooner or later, and maybe it doesn’t need so much art to do this. It just needs us to be aware about inventions and habits from the past and their problems attached. Not to be art negative, art will always be a seismograph of the time we live in and therefore maybe it can deliver a contemporary message, whatever it might be.
