Jan Madeus
From painting on canvas to photographing façades — a short account of how the work found its way to colour, structure, and the space between them.
Send messageFrom painting to façades
Jan Madeus is a fine art photographer based in Berlin. He trained as a painter at the Academy of Fine Art, and that training still decides everything — he approaches a building the way one approaches a canvas: frontally, patiently, until a wall stops being a wall and becomes colour and structure.
His central body of work, Fremde Fassaden, takes modernist and brutalist façades in Berlin and shifts their colour into flat, abstract fields — colour-shifted architecture. An earlier series, Metamorphosis, held single objects before and after time had worked on them; it was awarded Silver in the Conceptual category at the 1839 Awards. The images stay deliberately minimal: form, light and colour, nothing staged.
From Fremde Fassaden — modernist and brutalist façades in Berlin, photographed head-on and shifted in colour.
A habit from painting: standing in front of a surface long enough for it to stop being a wall.
Fremde Fassaden · series statement
The façade series is ongoing. Most frames are made in Berlin, with occasional detours — Duisburg, Visby, the Isle of Man — wherever a surface holds its colour long enough to be photographed.
Façades
Modernist and brutalist buildings in Berlin, photographed head-on. The work strips away their function — no people, no sky, no perspective tricks — until only the plane, its colour and the light across it remain.
Colour as subject
A painter’s habit carried into photography: standing in front of a surface until it turns abstract, then shifting its colour. The result reads as much as painting as document — flat, reduced, quiet.
Signed editions
- Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 — signed and numbered by hand.
- Editions of 15, 10 or 5 — once sold, never reprinted.
- Sold directly — each with a Certificate of Authenticity.
Selected exhibitions & awards
Jan Madeus has exhibited since 1986, for much of that time under his birth name, Krzysztof Jarzebinski. Trained as a painter and printmaker at the Academy of Fine Art in Kraków and long based in Berlin, he was for years a member of the BBK Berlin — the professional association of visual artists — and has worked across painting, printmaking and photography.
Selected exhibitions
- 2017Bunte Haut — solo, Projektraum art.endart, Berlin
- 2001Scherbenschnitte — with Michael Speier, Kunstverein Schorndorf
- 1999durchblicke — Neues Kunsthaus Ahrenshoop
- 1997Contemporary Polish Book Art — Polish Institute, Berlin
- 1996Kunsthaus Berlin-Neukölln
- 1994Mini Print International, Barcelona
- 1986Polish Contemporary Painting, Szczecin
Awards & honours
- 20261839 Awards — Silver, Conceptual (Metamorphosis)
- 1999SüdwestLB Printmaking Prize, Stuttgart
- 1999Käte Dorsch Foundation work grant
- 1995Anne Birman Photography Prize, Gera
About the work
Who is Jan Madeus?
Jan Madeus is a fine art photographer based in Berlin, born Krzysztof Jarzębiński. Trained as a painter and printmaker, he photographs modernist and brutalist façades head-on and shifts their colour into flat, abstract fields. The work is sold as signed, numbered editions on Hahnemühle paper.
Is Jan Madeus his real name?
No — it is his artist name. Jan Madeus was born Krzysztof Jarzębiński in Poland and has lived in Berlin since 1989. Jan is his second given name; Madeus is an invented word, chosen because his birth name was hard to remember and to pronounce outside Poland. It is not a family name and has no other meaning; it is spelled Madeus. Earlier exhibitions and prizes are listed under Krzysztof Jarzebinski. All current work is signed Jan Madeus.
What is Fremde Fassaden?
Fremde Fassaden is Jan Madeus’s central series. He photographs modernist and brutalist façades in Berlin frontally, without people or sky, then shifts their colour until the wall reads as a plane of colour rather than a building — an approach he calls colour-shifted architecture.
Is Jan Madeus an architecture photographer?
He photographs architecture, but as fine art rather than documentation. Where an architectural photographer records a building for its owner, Madeus treats the façade as a surface — frontal, unpeopled, reduced to colour and light — closer to painting than to a record of the structure.
What is Das Haus gegenüber?
Das Haus gegenüber is one apartment block in Berlin-Kreuzberg, seen from the same window over months. The frame never moves; only the light does. Every trace of habitation is taken out, leaving a surface passing through a year.
What makes his work fine art rather than a photograph of a building?
The subject is colour and surface, not the building. Madeus stands in front of a façade until it turns abstract, then shifts its colour, so the image reads as much as painting as document. There are no people, no sky and no perspective tricks — only the plane and its light.
Where can you see or buy Jan Madeus’s work?
The work is shown at janmadeus.com and sold directly as signed, numbered editions on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308, in editions of 15, 10 or 5, each with a Certificate of Authenticity. Enquiries go by email to info@janmadeus.com; there is no automated checkout.
Jan Madeus
Krzysztof Jarzebinski, Berlin. Studied painting and graphic art; works between architecture and abstraction. Series: Fremde Fassaden, Das Haus gegenüber, Auf Augenhöhe and Abstract. 1839 Awards — Silver, Conceptual, 2026.
Fine art prints are produced as signed, numbered editions on Hahnemühle paper. Editions, sizes and prices on request.
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