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Moderne Ruinen
von • by Christian Thoelke
Foto: Norman Konrad
www.christian-thoelke.de

What do abandoned buildings from the GDR era reveal about

the history after 1990? Having already paid a heavy price for

Germany’s overall defeat through post-war dismantling, the eastern

part underwent a second wave of deindustrialisation following

reunification. At the same time, West German investment – largely

detached from actual demand – generated an oversupply of

housing, shopping centres and commercial developments. During

the modernisation boom, which peaked in 1995 when construction

activity in eastern Germany was almost twice as high as in the

western states, imported Western modernity advanced like a

breakwater in front of the GDR building stock, leaving it to decline

both culturally and financially. The paintings of Christian Thoelke,

born in East Berlin in 1973, depict these places long after they have

lost their original function: wastelands where trees have taken root,

replacing sites once shaped by planning, public provision and the

socialist promise of community. Thoelke builds up his canvases

in multiple layers to create an exceptionally smooth surface. The

preparatory coat lends the motifs a warm tonal base and an inner

cohesion. Using a glazing technique, he creates paintings that are

restrained, precise and controlled, yet rich in atmosphere. Rather

than closing off his compositions completely, he juxtaposes sharply

defined sections with more open areas. This tension allows the

works to remain open to multiple interpretations. They emerge as

a form of belated recognition of a development characterised by

deprivation and of an architecture, whose urban and social qualities

were often too hastily dismissed after 1990 as nothing more than

the “legacy of a dictatorship”. The catalogue, Modern Ruins, brings

together these works and is available from VfmK.
IDYLLE, 2022 · Öl auf Leinwand, 200 × 280 cm