• Original 2001 Olaf Breuning Ugly, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit — hardcover front showing full-bleed colour photograph of a young woman in round sunglasses, white crop top, and shoulder holster, holding a pistol raised to shoulder height and a power drill at hip, standing in a narrow wooden doorway, red lipstick, direct gaze
  • Reverse of 2001 Olaf Breuning Ugly, Hatje Cantz — hardcover back showing full-bleed colour photograph of a shirtless young man in aviator sunglasses and black wig covered in temporary tattoos including a large tiger on the abdomen, holding a Gatorade bottle, standing outdoors against a rocky background in red Champion shorts
  • Interior spread of 2001 Olaf Breuning Ugly — full-bleed colour photograph of a large CRT television monitor mounted in the open boot of a hatchback car under a yellow-green sky, screen showing a group portrait of seven people in dark clothing
  • Interior spread of 2001 Olaf Breuning Ugly — two pages of colour video stills arranged as a contact sheet, sixteen frames with timecodes showing road trip footage: desert highways, Monument Valley, a woman in a red bikini, close-up faces, aviator sunglasses, a figure dancing beside an SUV
  • Interior spread of 2001 Olaf Breuning Ugly — full-bleed colour photograph of a figure in a white paper-bag mask, white Adidas tracksuit, and white trainers crouching in a large sports retail store, holding a football, Wilson tennis racket displays and Hyper Carbon signage visible in background
  • Interior spread of 2001 Olaf Breuning Ugly — full-bleed colour photograph of two figures against a black background: left, a man with long black hair, moustache, and red lipstick; right, a figure with dark skin makeup, long blonde wig, and red lipstick, both bare-shouldered, facing camera
  • Interior spread of 2001 Olaf Breuning Ugly — full-page colour photograph of a shirtless man in black wig and aviator sunglasses covered in temporary tattoos including a large tiger, skulls, roses, kanji characters, and tribal designs, holding a supplement jar, red shorts, rocky outdoor setting
  • Interior spread of 2001 Olaf Breuning Ugly — full-page colour photograph of a young woman in round sunglasses, white crop top, and shoulder holster standing in a narrow wooden doorway, holding a pistol raised to shoulder and a green-and-red power drill at hip
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Hatje Cantz

Olaf Breuning — Ugly — Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2001

Olaf Breuning — Ugly — Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2001

Publisher
Hatje Cantz
Place & year
Ostfildern-Ruit, 2001
Type
Artist Book
Format
Hardcover, 160 pp., colour and black-and-white illustrations throughout
Size
22.5 × 30.5 cm
Condition
Good vintage condition: light shelf wear to boards and edges; minor handling marks; clean interior.
Register
TNR-2026-0229 · 16 June 2026
£50
£50
Sale Placed
Register No. TNR-2026-0229
Registered 16 June 2026
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Shipping: UK £7, free over £50 · Europe £18 · US & Canada £25 · Rest of world £30.
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Notes

Text in English.

Published at the beginning of the 2000s, Ugly gathers a decade of Olaf Breuning’s photographs, videos, performances, road trips, costumes, disguises, staged accidents, and constructed identities. Produced before social media but already operating within a culture of accelerated images, the publication records a practice built from excess, imitation, parody, and deliberate overproduction.

The book belongs to a moment when contemporary art absorbed material from television, advertising, youth culture, amateur photography, tattoo imagery, road movies, and early digital aesthetics. Breuning’s work moved freely between these territories, treating them less as subjects than as available material.

As an object, Ugly functions somewhere between monograph, image archive, and personal inventory. Costumes appear. Vehicles appear. Performers appear. Temporary situations are staged, photographed, and retained. The publication becomes a storage device for events that otherwise existed only briefly.

More than two decades later, the book reads as an unusually direct record of a period when contemporary art was beginning to mirror the speed, instability, and visual density of everyday image culture. A substantial early Olaf Breuning publication from the period that established the visual language for which he remains best known.

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