Hans Theys is a twentieth-century philosopher and art historian. He has written and designed dozens of books on the works of contemporary artists and published hundreds of essays, interviews and reviews in books, catalogues and magazines. All his publications are based on actual collaborations and conversations with artists.

This platform was developed by Evi Bert (M HKA / Centrum Kunstarchieven Vlaanderen) in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (Research group Archivolt), M HKA, Antwerp and Koen Van der Auwera. We also thank Idris Sevenans (HOR) and Marc Ruyters (Hart Magazine).

ESSAYS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS

Veronika Breuer - 2025 - Analogue Analogies [EN, essay]
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Hans Theys

 

 

 

Analogue Analogies

Some words on Veronika Breuer’s work 

 

 

Veronika Breuer was born to an Austrian father and a Hungarian mother. She grew up in a bilingual world, surrounded by a flock of siblings. This seems to have conferred a certain permeability onto her, an individuality that manifests itself softly, in a seemingly fragile manner which I would like to describe as a cautious resistance: open but firm. Her photographs are atmospheric, dominated by dark blues, greens or reds. Their poetic value seems to spring from a brittle texture reminding us of mist or the tender flesh of certain leaves. They have the body of curtains, loaves of bread, cheese, wood or soil.

 

 

Disappearing photographs

 

The particular nature of these photographs, I believe, is no accident, but the result of a persistent fiddling: printing photographs, rephotographing them… touching, forgetting and rediscovering. To be honest, I believe that Breuer tries to release as least photographs as possible. If they are out there, it’s because she couldn’t hold them back anymore. She doesn’t ‘produce’ photographs, she tries to make them disappear. 

Last year Breuer was trying to figure out how to show some photographs without really showing them. One of them was projected with an overhead projector. It was an image representing a young woman mopping a wet floor. The image was based on a black and white 4x5 HP5+ ilford negative, rephotographed to obtain a negative with a positive image.

Some printed photographs found themselves glued in a handmade book. The Hungarian title ‘A Duna Vallomása’ could be translated as ‘The Danube’s Testimony’. The English title ‘By the Danube’ refered to the location of Breuer’s wanderings but also to the life giving, nourishing nature of big rivers like the Nile, the Amazone or the Yangtze. The book found itself on a table covered with sand and 30 million year old clay, pushed up from the belly of the earth and forming a insoluble wall guiding the Danube.

In a second room you could hear the song ‘A Duna Vallomása’, performed by Mihály Víg, the long time collaborator and composer of Bela Tarr and one of the main actors in the film Sátántangó. Breuer asked him if he wanted to sing the song for her so she could record it on a cassette tape. The song was played by the recorder she used to record it. It was based on a poem by Ady Endre. In this poem the poet asks the Danube about things it has witnessed.

The light coming from the street window and entrance doors was tinted by a fabric treated with a selfmade mixture of beeswax with linseed oil and pumpkin seed oil. The ‘curtains’ closing the space were torn and stitched and treated with the same mixture. The backside window was veiled by a fabric soaked in the 30 million year old clay mentioned above.

 

 

A new installation

 

In this new installation, entitled Shine!, a photograph is projected on a self woven white fabric. The photograph shows two people: a man lying on a bed and an older woman stooping over him. The self woven fabric is 70 cm wide and five metres long. It is woven with cotton and Hungarian hemp on a warp consisting of 700 threads. It is weighed down with hand-made clay shapes made of rusty red clay, collected, dried, sieved, rewatered and formed in Budapest. Again, the photograph seems to become immaterial, transparent even, because you can look at it from both sides of the projection screen.

 

The installation also contains hanging fabrics bathed in red clay from Budapest and soaked in linseed oil (2,5 x 1,5 metres) and five stools made of ash wood from the Montafon region in Austria. They were designed by Breuer’s uncle Bernhard Breuer and turned by Juergen Tschofen on behalf of Breuer.

 

In my opinion, Breuer’s consequent search for an analogue, concrete approach to photography and installation speaks of a world to come; a world rooted in traditions and crafts that have survived our superficial quest for economoic growth, which has left most people in an unhinged state of deprivation, shallowness, spiritual emptiness and loneliness. I hope many young people  will follow her example and reshape a world of hope, taste, tactile pleasure, beauty and personal fulfillment.

 

 

Montagne de Miel, 22 June 2025