Luna Park #2

Author: Olaf Breuning
Place and date:

Former amusement park of Artxanda, Bilbao, 2005

 

15 years ago, the Bizkaia amusement park on the top of mount Artxanda was closed. Proof and symbol of the  ‘acceleration of history’, the amusement park is a contemporary ruin, an allegory of a doped economy and the print of failed mass tourism.
Luna Park is a poetic link between a series of produced works and social, political or economic issues, with an important time lag: the works transmit the park 15 years after its closure. Like a message launched to the future, in which each work takes its own path, Luna Park is an exhibition for the future.

 Using the visual association of blue seats with the surrounding vegetation, Olaf Breuning portrays the terraces of the amphitheatre. One detail transforms the significance of the painting: each seat has eyes. With this gesture, Olaf Breuning achieves an entertaining and unsettling image that condenses the sinister reality of the former place of recreation. 

Luna Park, conceived by Franck Larcade, Lisette Smits and Alexis Vaillant/produced by consonni with the support of the Heritage Centre of the Department of Treasury of the Provincial Government of Bizkaia. With aid from the European Cultural Foundation, Department of Culture of the Provincial Government of Bizkaia.


 

 

 

 

Antiguo Parque de Atracciones de Artxanda, Bilbao
07.2005