TEKTONIK - Titus Schade

The images of Titus Schade’s paintings are common elements of the architectural vernacular: half-timbered houses, granaries, warehouses, church towers, cranes and windmills, GDR prefab housing estates and Wilhelminian-style residential buildings. But although their formal vocabulary references the architectural reality of Germany’s cities and countryside, they immerse viewers in parallel worlds that border on the fantastical.

The distinct artificiality that characterises the painterly constructions of this former master student of Neo Rauch might be reminiscent of the pasteboard villages that the Russian minister Gregory Potemkin is said to have built to deceive Catherine the Great. The fact that their imaginary settings are evocative of backdrops and miniature models alike is not least owed to their theatrical lighting, which cunningly underpins the all-pervasive feeling of doom. In the same vein, the familiarity of the architectural motifs is undermined by the near-surrealistic presence of disruptive elements such as wood piles, chopping blocks or volcanoes, often appearing in several iterations within the same picture as if to emphasise its oneiric or film-like nature. The absence of any human presence further reinforces the sense of uncanniness that takes hold of the spectator of these ‘soul landscapes’ (Caspar David Friedrich), whose masterful execution follows in the great tradition of Central German painting.

The German word « Tektonik », as a title and as a concept, is borrowed from geology, where it refers to the study of the structure of the Earth’s crust. Applied to Titus Schade’s paintings, it denotes the spatial arrangements and temporal overlaps that unfold in them, the tectonics of levels or layers – of paint, of meaning – that collide, intertwine, overlap and accumulate into simultaneously captivating and challenging works.

Published in conjunction with his monographic exhibition at the Konschthal Esch (2024), this book documents a new stage in Titus Schade's work through a selection of over eighty illustrations and texts.

Titus Schade (b. 1984, Leipzig) is a major figure of the young German painting scene. He lives and works in Leipzig (D). His work has been shown in several solo and group exhibitions in Germany.

Available at the Konschthal.

Selling price: 38€