KP Brehmer
Das Gefühl zwischen Fingerkuppen ...

For his contribution to the graphic portfolio Grafik des Kapitalistischen Realismus (EB25), KP Brehmer draws on the principles of product and merchandise design, as he did for the edition Regenschachtel (EB20). The object graphic Aufsteller 25. Das Gefühl zwischen den Fingerkuppen … (Display 25. The feeling between finger couples …) is part of a series of boxes and display stands that were primarily created between 1965 and 1967 and imitate the shapes of product packaging or billboards. Brehmer borrows the trivial motifs of the cliché prints, which are mostly mounted on folded cardboard, from the world of consumerism. As early as 1965, some of these early cliché prints and displays were shown in the exhibition Trivialgrafik at Galerie René Block. Brehmer repeatedly takes up the image of women in the media, especially in the displays, and more specifically the cliché of the seductress who is often used in advertising to sell all kinds of products to men.¹ Das Gefühl zwischen Fingerkuppen … is a screen print on cardboard that is folded in the shape of an advertising display. The printed upper half shows a pin-up girl in profile lasciviously taking a drag on a cigar. However, the message of this fictitious advertisement does not refer to the consumption of tobacco, as one might assume at first glance. Instead, the focus is on a haptic experience that is charged with sensual pleasure, as the words “DAS GEFÜHL ZWISCHEN FINGERKUPPEN” (THE FEELING BETWEEN FINGER COUPLES) printed next to the woman’s head emphasize. In the lower half, Brehmer ironically counteracts this suggestion: four commercially available seed bags are lined up there – with vegetables and flowers, whose phallic form takes up the sexual allusion from the image motif and at the same time exaggerates it into the ridiculous.
Text: Katrin Seemann

¹ Cf. Barbara Heinrich, “Elly, Goya und die anderen”, in: René Block (ed.), KP Brehmer. Alle Künstler lügen, exhib. cat., Kassel: Kunsthalle Fridericianum, 1998, p. 139.