Blinds, Kreuzberg — II

A shadow crosses the whole picture on the diagonal and cuts it in two — one half in shade, one in sun. It runs straight over the closed shutter without acknowledging it, dividing the window as evenly as it divides the wall. Above, a band of yellow; below, a tiled plinth with one vent, then the pavement.

What drew me was the paintwork: a ground floor given a yellow band, a coloured wall and a white tiled base, all of it decided by someone and then left alone. The colour is shifted afterwards — a decision, not a record — but the banding was already there.

The frame is square, which leaves no long side for the eye to run along. Everything in it is rectilinear except the shadow, and the shadow wins: it crosses the yellow band, the violet wall and the closed shutter at one angle, without acknowledging any of them. Held at arm’s length the picture reads as two triangles.

Photographed from the pavement in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Part of Fremde Fassaden, an ongoing series of colour-shifted façades made in Berlin, with detours to Duisburg, Visby and Douglas. See the other works made in Kreuzberg.