Timothée Chaillou

When did you start using cars in your photographic compositions?

Olaf Breuning

I guess before I owned one myself. That was 13 years ago. I was just interested in the object because it is always on top of time. One new thing our culture produces at a short rhythm is new cars. At the moment they are all roundish with big behinds, don’t ask me why… But I think it is a very short-term description of our culture at a certain time.

Timothée Chaillou

For what reasons did you choose to use cars as backgrounds in your photographs?

Olaf Breuning

There are only three or four photographs with cars in the background, I am not that obsessed with cars. Well, not true, now I am obsessed with cars, since I own one; you can see it in the photo Mami? Papi? (2013). Before it was more to integrate a common tool of today into my work.

Timothée Chaillou

Do you like using cars as a symbolic element of masculine/​feminine futility, of a voluntarily affirmed power or of a certain social success?

Olaf Breuning

I don’t know if it is a big social success when you drive a Toyota Camry! I guess that a majority of cars today do not represent futility or social success anymore. And why is it that some people like power tools and engines…? Ask Mother Nature. I was asking myself the same question when I went to the hardware store to buy a chainsaw!

Timothée Chaillou

You have done a series entitled ​“Camelops Femina.” A camel is a means of transportation.

Olaf Breuning

I always want to mix things together in the strangest way. And I think I did that with ​“Camelops Femina.” I was invited to do a show at Carbon 12, a gallery in Dubai. I had never been in the Middle East in my life and I wanted to create a work related to this fact. Like in many of my works, I have a very naïve view on things. The one thing I knew about the Middle East since I was a child is: there are camels and women hidden behind clothes. I tried to combine these two things. I was scared when I went there for the show because I knew my humor might not cross the border this time. But I was surprised; people thought it was interesting and funny.

Timothée Chaillou

To surprise people with humor is the main drive of your formal research.

Olaf Breuning

Humor is my tool to get through this life. If humor didn’t exist anymore, you could send me a gun by FedEx today and I would shoot myself tomorrow (in the knee). Humor, from my point of view, is a very good way to communicate. When I meet someone new at a party and this person has no humor at all, I usually say: ​“Excuse me, I have to go to the toilet.” Again, humor does not have to be telling one joke after another; it is more a secret language between people. To show that they are able to take a step back and have a mindful distance to things. And for sure there are moments in life when humor is not appreciated.

Timothée Chaillou

Do you think that your garishly made up characters are in an ​“altered state,” or intoxicated by their own colors?

Olaf Breuning

They are an offspring of my artistically altered state of mind, and to know more about that I would need a consult with my shrink first. But like all my other works, I just have an idea, and during the creation and the after-life of the works, the character gains something my shrink and I will never understand.

Timothée Chaillou

According to Susan Sontag, the Camp ​“is the love of what is not natural, of the device and exaggeration.” It is ​“a style of excess, shrill contrast, ridiculous taking, dramatic quality of a poor deliberate taste which blurs clear boundaries of the nice and the ugliness, convenience and the malséance.” Is this blurring of boundaries important in your work?

Olaf Breuning

I like when an artwork oscillates between visual stereotypes. I see works as batteries storing different combinations of possible information. I always want to look at an artwork of mine in a different way. I would say: ​“blurring of boundaries and of common senses;” that’s a noble goal for my creations and me.

Timothée Chaillou

“My work has a desperate humor,” as you said. Why do you need it to be desperate or sarcastic?

Olaf Breuning

Because life is desperate and sarcastic! The simple fact that we have one life and that at one point (that’s not even up to us) it is just finished. That is not something that makes any sense. Whatever we do during our lifetime will be gone. To see that in a positive way, you have to be religious or a big optimist. I myself use this fact as a source of inspiration. That helps a lot to digest it. This would be better explained with the intro speech of Larry David in Woody Allen’s Whatever Works.

Timothée Chaillou

Do you agree with Mark Schlüter when he writes: ​“clowns are screens onto which the enjoyment of the others’ suffering can be projected. This suffering can be staged either as a melancholic gesture, as an enigmatic irony or as a brash slapstick […] Clown takes the stage as a strident transfer of a gaiety as fake as it is false”?

Olaf Breuning

Yes, I would agree.

Timothée Chaillou

Marnie Weber said that clowns are ​“stuck in an existential quagmire of being cheerful. To be happy is a very dark journey.” Is this relevant for your smiling figures?

Olaf Breuning

Yes, that might be an interpretation of clowns. We see whatever we want to see, even in clowns.

Timothée Chaillou

“I never want to be an artist who makes ​‘fun art’.” How could you not drift into ​“fun art”?

Olaf Breuning

I think I already make fun art; so I crossed that line! But I try to balance things. Sometimes I like to do something just beautiful and fun like the ​“Smoke Bomb” performances (2008−2013). But I also like to do darker and commentative things, like in my films. Yes there might be a kind of humor where the result is just ​“ha ha” and nothing more, maybe I was worried about becoming an artist with this kind of language.

Timothée Chaillou

Andy Warhol said: ​“I always like to work on leftovers, doing the leftover things. Things that were discarded, that everybody knew were no good, I always thought had a great potential to be funny. It was like recycling work. I always thought there was a lot of humor in leftovers.”

Olaf Breuning

Andy Warhol said a lot in his lifetime. Maybe he did use ​“leftovers” strategies in his films, but I think most of his work was spot on. He would create very new things that had nothing to do with leftovers. Oh, but I forgot the piss paintings … definitely leftovers … after all, his own leftovers!

Timothée Chaillou

You said: ​“I like a universal language, I like simple things; it’s something like a Brechtian point of view: narrow everything very simply and behave like human beings.”

Olaf Breuning

I am a simple man, and I do admire Berthold Brecht for his straightforward and yet smart way to talk about this life and world.

Timothée Chaillou

Do you think of your drawings as innocent, simple or naïve? For what reasons do you want to describe our world in this way?

Olaf Breuning

I like a direct language. Old people, children or even people that have never seen a piece of art, would understand my drawings. I like that. That’s how I want to communicate with my art. I was never a big fan of making things complicated in order to make them look smarter.

Timothée Chaillou

What about the mythical elements often seen in your videos?

Olaf Breuning

I like to dream about non-existing things, and maybe that reflects in some of my works.