The same way as for Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian for Hans Breder the task of art, as a kind of thought, is spiritual. His work seeks to articulate and evoke an ineffable power beyond reason and unreason. Against the monumental materialism of Western culture, over the last six decades, Breder’s intermedial sensibility has been expressed in and between painting, sculpture, photography, music, installation, video and film--each expression an invitation to subversive liminality and momentary transcendence. Breder’s work dissolves boundaries and manipulates perception, sometimes enticing, sometimes shocking the observer to an experience of liminality from which a realm of pure possibility may emerge.
One of the first video artists to be included in three Whitney Biennials, Hans Breder founded the Intermedia Program in the School of Art & Art History at the University of Iowa and directed it until his retirement as a Distinguished Professor in 2000. The internationally regarded program built on Breder’s interdisciplinary inclination for intellectual and aesthetic collision.