Monday, August 10, 2015

Olaf Breuning at Metro Pictures

Olaf Breuning at Metro Pictures
(link)

Clownic terror is their emotional indifference to our own, irony as slapstick, forcing a replacement of our feelings with manic versions, to feel better. Happy or sad, the clown face draws its emotion as large as possible, overpowering the nuanced plane of facial expression, overshadowing our own, powerless and impotent. Breuning's horror vacuii of expressionist ebullience, in video or images, leaves no space, everything feeling filled with manic awful glee. Even an expression of solidarity, "It is hard sometimes," writ in colorful sponge overly cheerful, is covered in the image of a woman hefting the weight of the world with a playfully stupid incompetence, a weight we can't carry, and mocking us for it. Breuning a villain swaddled in fun that is no fun at all.