art candy

Artist Olaf Breuning Submits the Worst-Ever ‘Project Runway’ Application

Olaf Breuning’s Brian (2008)

What a lovely wound! Such elegant cucumber fingers! As glamour shots go, rising Swiss art star Olaf Breuning’s portrait of his friend (and frequent canvas) Brian Kerstetter is overflowing with such playful grotesquerie that the only response is a gagging retch crossed with a laugh — a disquieting sound. Made a decade after Breuning gave his then-girlfriend similar debeautification treatment in Sibylle, the picture works as a critique of notions of beauty in art, a low-fi nod at Cindy Sherman (a Metro Pictures stablemate), and a reminder to Crocs wearers everywhere that their shoes are ungodly hideous. At Metro Pictures through November 8.

Artist Olaf Breuning Submits the Worst-Ever ‘Project Runway’ Application