Breuk Iversen

Breuk Iversen
in Madison Square Park, NYC (2009)
Born	Brooklyn, New York
Nationality	American
Training	School of Visual Arts
Awards	Communication Arts, Art Director's Club
Website	BreukIversen.com

Breuk Iversen, (born July 25, 1964) is a designer and writer. Iversen is named 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 [2] 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.

Biography

Breuk Iversen was born in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, New York and the first of two children born of Frank Iversen, an amateur botanist and craftsman, and wife, Joanne Iversen. He has worked as a graphic designer, copywriter, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media specialist. Other less noteworthy interests; Chinese culture, advertising, Feng Shui, Tetrad Management, Taoism, Social Media, Music Composition & Fine Art.

In 1999, he graduated from School of Visual Arts (SVA) where he studied under Len Sirowitz, Dick Raboy, James Victore, Tony Palladino, Steven Brower, Luba Lukova, Paul Davis and Milton Glaser. In his Sophomore year at SVA, he opened a design firm, on 5th Avenue in NYC named [3] Disciplined Beauty and by graduation, had owned and operated the design firm, where he worked under the reputed title; Creative Director. On 5th Avenue (1996–2001), his office, directly across the hall from Dick Raboy, a NYC advertising copywriter, and had studied under his tutelage until his death in May 2004. In 1998, he married, Argentinian designer, Debora Gutman, and was divorced year later.

11211 Magazine

Iversen published several magazines including 11211 magazine, Appetite, Fortnight, Wburg Calendar, The Box Map and 10003 magazine for the East Village in Manhattan. 11211 magazine had attracted worldwide attention covering infamous artists such as Terrance Lindall, Rene Iatba, Nick Zedd and Mike Diana in New York City.

Offal Movement

Iversen is the founding member of the art collabrative known as "Offal", using common refuse as a medium. Among several exhibits under the Offal Project 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 said: "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 poet, 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 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 super-technologically 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 arbitrary events (time), seeking paradigms in the Zeitgeist."