Colour-Shifted Architecture

Architecture, seen as colour

Jan Madeus is a Berlin-based fine art photographer working at the edge of architecture and abstraction — see abstract architecture photography for how the pictures are made. In the series Fremde Fassaden, ordinary façades are lifted out of their function: colour becomes surface, and the surface becomes an image. Frontal, unpeopled and reduced, each photograph turns a familiar wall into a second reality — at once recognisable and strange. The work has been recognised internationally, including a Silver at the 1839 Awards in the Conceptual category. Prints are produced as signed, numbered limited editions on Hahnemühle fine art paper, made for collectors, curators and spaces that reward a long, quiet look.

The core of the work is Berlin: brutalist and post-war modernist buildings in Kreuzberg, Mitte and Neukölln, photographed from the street and shifted in colour. The main series is Fremde Fassaden; a second, quieter series, Das Haus gegenüber, watches one building over three years. Editions, sizes and prices are listed openly on the prints page, and what a limited edition actually means is explained there too. Notes on buildings, light and the way of seeing appear in the Journal.