Olaf Breuningì Ugly Edited by Christoph Doswald, texts by Christoph Doswald, Gianni Jetzer, Markus Stegmann, Dorothea Strauss, Philippe Vergne English editionì 164 pp., 125 color illus., ì 22.4 x 30.5 cm, hardcoverì ISBN 3-7757-1105-8ì July 2001 Over the last three years the Swiss artist, Olaf Breuning (born in Schaffhausen in 1970), has become widely known through his participation in various international group exhibitions, including Missing Link (Kunstmuseum Bern/Kunst Haus Dresden), Hypermental (Kunsthaus Zürich/Kunsthalle Hamburg) and Let's Entertain (Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis/Centre Pompidou, Paris/Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg). In his photographs, videos and installations - seen here for the first time in a comprehensive overview - Olaf Breuning engages with the reality of the media that surround us day in, day out. In doing so he draws on a huge fund of images from films, television and advertising, video clips and computer games which he brings together in a hybrid mix of nonchalant elegance. For Breuning nothing is too sacred or profane to be icluded in one of his playfully subtle combinations: in his installation Ugly Yelp (2000), for instance, Breuning creates an ensemble from the accoutrements of occultism, New Age fads and vampire films - combining disgust, sweetness and kitsch, horror, levity and gravity to create a world of unforgettable images.