Breuk Iversen
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Breuk Iversen, publisher and artist, is the raconteur of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, one of the liveliest and largest art communities in the world. He is famous for his production, with Jan McLaughlin, at the Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery of the “Salon des Refuses: the Offal Project” a site-specific exhibit that explored issues of economy, aesthetics, politics and popular culture through society's by-products.
The exhibit included refuse collected from galleries operating under the Williamsburg Gallery Association and advertised with the motto “See all the Williamsburg Gallery Association's garbage in one place”.
“Salon des Refuses” became the talk of Williamsburg.
As part of opening night's performances, One Thousand dollars was on sale for less than half price. $1 bills sold for $0.49, $5 bills for $2.49, $10. bills for $4.99, and finally $20 bills for $9.99 each. Who can resist buying money for 1/2 price?
A well-known wag of Williamsburg said, ”Shows that artists can provide a useful service to society…collecting garbage”.
Regarding Offalism, Breuk says "Senior year, at SVA, I devised a fine art project with some fellow students: W. Timothy Ryan (painter), Dmitry Gubin (photographer), and a prolific Williamsburg writer, Kay Divant. Kay suggested I move to Williamsburg with my now former wife, Debora Gutman, to join the developing artist colony.
"The Offal Project was an antecedent, four-person collaborative project based on garbage (literally) permanently trapped under resin. Arbitrary addresses in Manhattan were photographed and I transported garbage by train or taxi back to Williamsburg for cementing. This satisfied my appetite for studying both Sociology and random synchronistic events. Offalism successfully conceptually merged Surrealism, Pop Art, Dadaism, Postmodernism and Abstract Expressionism. We created 'time capsules' indicative of our culture which coupled as an excellent platform for sociological information extrapolation. We had four artists instead of one, a designer, painter, photographer and writer (similar components used in magazine publishing) and neither would dictate what the other should do.
"The Offal inquiry suggested that our society is overtly operating under a supertechnologically enforced binary system which manifests lethargic responses using multiplicity in contradiction to our genealogy as human beings. This ontological discourse directly influenced my decision to introduce with a "no editing" policy magazine. An absurd and socially disruptive notion. We attempted paralleling strict, mathematically charged Pythagorean archetypes (space) vis•a•vis with arbitrary events (time), seeking paradigms in the Zeitgeist."
Terrance Lindall, the world's foremost expert on contemporary surrealism, and writer for Art and Antiques Magazine, the world's foremost magazine of its type with writers such as the renowned art critic Hilton Kramer, immediately recognized Offalism as one of the two foremost types of Conceptual Surrealism in the 21st century, alongside Massurrealism.
Iversen is also a publisher of several magazines including 11211 Magazine [1], a full color hardcopy magazine for the now upscale community that has attracted worldwide attention with over 70 galleries and some of the best international restaurants in New York City. He also publishes a magazine called Appetite covering these restaurants and has started another magazine, 10003 Magazine covering the East Village in Manhattan. He also founded the North Brooklyn Business a chamber of Commerce for the area.
