About

• Trained as a reprographic technician, KP Brehmer began to develop an autonomous artistic oeuvre from the 1960s onwards. His early works use photomechanical reproduction techniques, including block-and-offset printing, to juxtapose imagery from popular media and advertising.
• Together with contemporaries like Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, KP Brehmer formulated Capitalist Realism - the German answer to American Pop Art and an important subversive movement in post-war European art.
• Working before a digital age, Brehmer and his peers saw printmaking as a metaphor for democracy - an instrument capable of stirring agitation through visual information. In a series of enlarged postage stamps, Brehmer uses familiar motifs from either side of the iron curtain to explore how symbolic value can transcend political borders, where people or goods may not be allowed to travel.
• Bremer's political leanings became more pronounced in the 1970s. In his Farbengeographien (Colour Geographies) series, he painted enlarged infographics onto commercial panels, presenting past and present concerns around themes of political extremism, environmental damage and socio-economic developments.
• Using the familiar visual language of abstraction and a colour palette dictated by sometimes propagandist sources, Brehmer's work can be seen as a critical commentary on abstract art, while at the same time pointing to much more universal anxieties surrounding public information and fake news.