KP BREHMER engl.

KP BREHMER. Correction of national colors | Mar 29th - Jun 23rd 2019 | special exhibition
catalogue for special exhibition | 232 pages | numerous colored illustrations | softcover | Koenig Books Ltd. | english edition

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting a comprehensive exhibition of the German painter, graphic artist and filmmaker KP Brehmer (1938-1997), whose work dealt with the visual media of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as the conditions of capitalist image production and reception in a complex manner. In doing so, he left behind a diverse, experimental, analytical and at the same time humorous œuvre, which is once again gaining relevance and topicality in its questions.
The Kunsthalle was the first museum to acquire works by the artist early on. With more than 200 works, the exhibition presents an overview of his entire œuvre. On display are drawings, collages, prints, paintings and films - with loans from the artist's estate as well as from international museums.
KP Brehmer, actually Klaus Peter Brehmer, belongs to the generation of artists who developed a critical "capitalist realism" in Germany with the means of American Pop Art – in words of the title of a portfolio published by René Block in 1968 with works by KP Brehmer and his contemporaries Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Wolf Vostell and Konrad Lueg. At the same time, Brehmer took on a special role in this environment: KB Brehmer, who was a professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg for decades, began his training as a reproduction technician. The principle of maximum duplication and spread of image templates had a decisive influence on his theoretical thinking and artistic activity. He presented the images of advertising, public television, and the illustrated press, as well as the motifs of posters from political propaganda, in an altered context, using graphics as a tool for political image agitation more radically and consistently than any other artist.
For KB Brehmer, graphics were not just a technique, but an instrument and metaphor for visualizing social and political conventions of representation. By appropriating the aesthetics of advertising displays at department stores, of postage stamps as state symbolic values, and of information media such as diagrams and statistics, and recoding them through slight shifts in meaning, he made their mechanisms of action recognizable. In this way, his work not only pilloried the strategies of established media, but also reflected their means and effects of deception and influence.
The exhibition is a co-production and will be shown at all four venues of the cooperation partners: In addition to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Neue Museum Nürnberg (October 26, 2018 to February 17, 2019), the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (July 7 to October 27, 2019) and ARTER, Istanbul (March 27 to August 30, 2020) are involved. The exhibition, which was jointly developed in a close, intensive dialogue, was designed with the aim of demonstrating KP Brehmer's relevance not only in Germany but also beyond.