Tuesday, September 16 200811:00am – 12:30pm VCU Commons Theater907 Floyd Ave  South African-born, Breitz creates art that is seemingly minimalist, comprised of simplified, recycled, fragmented images from popular culture, in a manner resembling pop art. Yet, despite the initial facade of easy accessibility, Breitz’s work questions and challenges the visual conventions it has appropriated leaving them exposed and vulnerable to new interpretations. The allure of her work lies in the recognizable mages of iconic movie stars, while its significance is created through Breitz’s ability to alter meaning through technique and context. In the process, the pleasures of familiarity inherent in popular visual imagery are transformed into provocative and uncanny works of art. A participant in the 51st Venice Biennale of 2005, Breitz portrays herself as an artist who insists not on living outside society, but who chooses to embrace social realities and utilizes them as medium. The ready-made aspect of her work, while traditionally derived, is implemented into a different genre as Breitz sees the use not as option but rather as an inevitable circumstance of present society. Drawn most to the hidden dysfunctions which dictate personal identity, Breitz becomes a virus which seeks to expose and redistribute the boundaries within consumer society. Breitz views the culture industry as a parent, her audience becomes a growing teenager finally able to think for itself, and her work is the means for this realization. The audience is drawn like a moth to a flame, enchanted by the familiar, yet struck with a new message Breitz has cleverly crafted under it all. 

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