The secret service comes by post, the spy is on the stamp. In 1990, during the final throes of the Soviet Union an edition of stamps was issued in honor of five KGB agents. It would seem strange: to make public these identities that should remain hidden and these names no one should know.
Albeit only the truly well-informed would be able assign the names to the spies in question. Fabian Reimann has taken on this subject, reworking the images and transferring them from tiny stamps to larger than life canvasses. Reimann uses the spies’ code names as titles of the works. Some of whom are in fact old acquaintances, as the artist has encountered them before in earlier work and his research on nuclear spies and the intricacies of art and espionage.
The second series of images features even more KGB heroes. What may have already seemed reactionary in 1990, is downright strange in the 1998 stamp edition. Russian stamps that honor heroes of the Soviet Union? Was this a time of longing for a big, united country, for a global power? Is this nostalgia even current today?
The title “From Russia with Love” is borrowed from the 1963 James Bond film.

2015