Hallen 05
Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin
7 – 15 September 2024

ChertLüdde is returning to Hallen 05 in Reinickendorf with a presentation of the intertwined narratives of two artist families, both deeply rooted in the history of East Berlin. In Matchstick, the artist Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt’s typographical works are exhibited across from the photographic installation of Peter Woelck and Wilhelm Klotzek. And in the main hall, Robert Rehfeldt’s colorful paintings are presented alongside the sculptural vitrine of Wilhelm Klotzek. 

The Rehfeldts, Robert and Ruth, worked together in parallel for many years during their marriage. Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (1932, Wurzen – 2024, Berlin) mostly compiled works of visual poetry with her typewriter, while Robert Rehfeldt (1931, Stargard – 1993, Berlin) experimented with prints, postcards, texts, paintings, videos and performances, a multitude of mediums reflecting the artist’s eclectic personality. Robert Rehfeldt was also an early pioneer of Mail Art in the GDR, a movement in which his wife also participated—forging international connections with other artists well beyond confined East Germany despite not being allowed to leave. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall profoundly transformed many aspects of their lives. In the years leading before his death, Robert Rehfeldt created a powerful series of paintings marked by vibrant, enthusiastic colors—a liveliness that had been absent from his work before the Wall’s collapse.

Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, a self-taught artist who worked from her home in Pankow throughout her career, chose to completely abandon her artistic pursuits after the Reunification in 1989. During her active years, she produced a significant body of work and left behind a large selection of concrete poetry and collages that began in the 1960s and directly engaged with the social realities of her time. Her geometric, typewritten figures, often exhibited alongside the abstract paintings of her husband Robert Rehfeldt, incorporate collages of fragmented newspapers and magazines from West Berlin. These works, which she termed “Cagy Beings,” reflect her deep longing to break free from the restrictive borders that shaped her life.

Not far from where the Rehfeldts lived in East Berlin, Peter Woelck (1948, Berlin – 2010, Berlin) photographed everyday life in Prenzlauer Berg throughout the 1970s and 1980s. While he did continue his photography practice after the Wall fell, he struggled as an artist to adapt to Capitalism. Only after his death was there a resurgence in his work, when his son took over his estate with the help of curator Bettina Klein and Galerie Laura Mars. Wilhelm Klotzek (1980, Berlin), Woelck‘s son, at this time as an art student and began directly integrating some of his father’s vivid depictions of life in the GDR into the “Berliner Zwischenlösung” (Berlin Provisional Solution). The three blue faux leather panels gather photos of various couples, passers-by, dancers, and telephone jacks; a concentrated boy playing chess; and people smoking. 

Woelck’s photographs are exhibited alongside Klotzek’s 2022 installation o.T. (Buchladenecke). Often dealing with condensed peculiarities of life, Klotzek devotes attention and humor to his architectural models and displays. The artwork in Hallen 05 is a pseudo-time-capsule of Berlin that pays homage to bookshops by treating them as public sculptures. The titles of the books in this fictional shop window all reference the GDR and art history, but are of his own invention. These reference not only the city he grew up in and his family’s history, but also his introduction to art through the historic bookshops of Berlin.

Across these two families of artists, ChertLüdde highlights the vast cultural manifold of the former GDR. While the Rehfeldts created cross-media work of self-expression, both Woelck and Klotzek documented and recreated respectively moments of everyday life—demonstrating how the art of and about the GDR cannot be reduced merely to ideological ascriptions.

Photo by Marjorie Brunet Plaza