“
Noah Breuer, Team Set (2015).
the German occupation and the famine
of 1944–45. (The book was released in
several translations, including the English language Flowers in Colour [1948].)
Positive associations with the beauty and
pleasure of flowers are all but universal,
but flowers—especially the tulip—are
particularly important to the Dutch
economy, Dutch art and Dutch identity.
This made Bloemen an appropriate source of imagery for Bremer’s first
exhibition in the Netherlands, which
took place last fall at Galerie Ron Mandos in Amsterdam, just across the Prinsengracht canal from where Bremer had
lived as a child. (He left for New York
in 1992.) The pleasure of his return was
apparent in the exuberant works on paper
he showed, and in the recent, lush suite
of hand-altered inkjet prints that is an
extension of this celebratory work. Each
individual flower is animated with floating dabs of acrylic paint and Mylar confetti. The flowers’ Latin and common
names provide the titles: Cactus Dahlia
Illusion, Dubbele Late Tulp, Parkiet Tulp
Sunshine, Scilla Campanulata and Triumph
Tulp Bruno Walter.
Bloemen is closely related to Bremer’s
earlier series of altered photos of a family
skiing holiday in the Alps. Like Bloemen,
To Joy took form in unique works on
paper and a handful of editions (seven
images issued in 2012 and 2014, also by
the Lower East Side Printshop; [see Art in
Print Jan–Feb 2013]). In each case, an
interesting personal history is connected
to the photographs, but the images suc-
ceed even when divorced from any backstory, expressing an infectious joie de
vivre that is as fresh and invigorating as
a spring bloom.
—Sarah Kirk Hanley
Noah Breuer
Team Set (2015)
Artist’s book, 4-color risographs, perfectbound in green faux leather, 10 x 7 x 3/16
inches (44 pages). Edition of 100. Printed
by the artist. Published and bound by
Small Editions, Brooklyn, New York. $44.
N
oah Breuer often dissects the
mechanics of the printed image—
particularly the common commercial
variety—to investigate its function in
pop culture. He has frequently turned to
baseball cards as subject, deconstructing
this popular printed object on a number
of levels. Breuer scans imagery from the
cards (photos, stats, team logos, manufacturers’ insignias) and reassembles them
into jumbled pastiches that resemble mismatched jigsaw puzzles. He then prints
the work in a variety of techniques and
formats, from large print-based installations to the current handheld book. Most
of the source material dates from the late
1980s and early ’90s, a time when “there
was an explosion of production . . . which
resulted in a near total devaluation of the
cards from that era,” the artist explains.
In Team Set, Breuer presents a dream
team of 36 All Star players (four for each
position) from 1989–90 cards published
by Topps—an exercise in retro “fantasy
baseball.” Eschewing any front matter,
the book begins with Dennis Eckersley
and marches through to Darryl Strawberry; each page intercuts between two
different cards of the player in question, clashing in a dissonant mashup. As
with his prior works in this vein, Breuer
amplifies the visual artifacts of the offset lithography used to print the original
cards, emphasizing the halftone dot as “a
central element.” The low-brow effect is
exaggerated by his decision to print the
pages as risographs, a precursor to contemporary color photocopiers related to
the mimeograph that was in wide use at
that time. The book closes with a diagram of a baseball field and a table of
contents naming each player. The kellygreen leatherette cover is emblazoned
with the book’s title in the golden yellow
used for team colors; a foil-stamped baseball diamond graces the lower left corner
of the back cover.
Breuer confesses there is an element of
“hero-worship and childhood nostalgia”
in the work, but the “Frankenstein-ed”
imagery reveals a certain level of “disappointment that my childhood idols are
not (were not) the great men they once
appeared to be when I was a pre-teen.”
The disjointed images recall a lost era of
baseball-hero worship seen through a
jaded 21st-century eye, reflecting a
broader loss of cultural innocence.
—Sarah Kirk Hanley
Art in Print March – April 2016
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