Dietmar Brehm

the “inexplicable perception of the image.” Having begun to work with photography and film in the 1970s, Brehm extended his practice to video in the early 1990s in order to reflect on different media strategies. His films are characterized by fuzzy extreme close-ups of moments that hint at fragments of things imagined. This focus on details transforms many of the images into signs of a pictorial language characterized by components derived from drawing. He semantically alters the images’ meaning, giving rise to an abstracted atmosphere based on his personal surroundings, be it in his apartment or his studio. Brehm manipulates conventional ways of seeing and thereby approaches a specific artistic reality. His filmic sequences frequently refer to social gatherings involving a variety of people in a homey atmosphere that can also take on a party-like or exuberant character. Brehm relates to the pop aesthetics of the period and to everyday situations, focusing on individuals and their psycho-social relations. His Super 8-format short films from the 1970s manifest iconic portraits of a generation inspired by punk and possessed of a sacrosanct attitude towards life. There are certain narrative elements that recur in his films to become serial in nature, inviting viewers to create their own stories according to the pictorial material at hand. Brehm’s collages of zoomed-in shots of ordinary moments and commonplace scenes give rise to uncanny moments of ubiquitous phenomena such as sitting together, chatting, drinking, smoking, working on hairdos, etc. The quality of the Super 8 format allows for the disruption of such continuous actions and for focusing on details that become part of a surrealist filmic scenario. Brehm’s films require thorough concentration so as not to miss the details that swiftly appear onscreen and eventually turn into ephemeral gestures of routine encounters and reiterated moments of life. W.S.