Fabian Reimann

Fabian Reimann uses the Whole Earth Catalog, first published in 1968 as a concise reference of tools for the improvement of the world and the self, as the starting point for the final issue of his own, visual-essay style 'egozine,' freeman’s journal, now in its tenth year. His Another Earth Catalog, only interrupted once by a personal essay, consists of a continuous stream of images: reproductions of the Utopian visions of the late 1960s—including not only material published in the Whole Earth Catalog, but also of other visionary projects from the Cold War period and the dawn of Postmodernism. Fabian Reimann loosely maintains the five categories of the Catalog (Understanding Whole Systems, Shelter and Land Use, Industry and Craft, Communications, Community, Nomadics and Learning) and connects the visions of the late 1960s with current images that can be traced back to the fantasies of these earlier times.

When Russian spy Rudolph Abel (1903–1971) was arrested in New York on June 21, 1957, the FBI found fifty oil paintings in his studio. Abel had used his work as an amateur artist and photographer as his cover. His favourite subject: lonely old men in the big city. For his book Amateur Fabian Reiman has conducted research in FBI archives to learn about the circumstances of the life of the artist spy. The pictures taken by the FBI of Abel’s studio and workspace show him as someone who was adept in priming canvas as well as making wiretaps. The book was published on occasion of the exhibition Amateur und Überflieger at Kunstverein Hannover in 2013.