Niebo nad Berlinem

Jan Zakrzewski has made it his aim to investigate the full complexity of the relations – still characterised by a range of emotions – between Poland and Germany. The great distance that he has developed from his home country – he has lived in the USA for twenty years – permits him to take a relaxed view of the German- Polish relationship beyond existing stereotypes, and to view the two countries in the context of several centuries of European history.
Zakrzewski’s installation confronts the visitor with political and national citations and slogans from the past.
The artist has symbolically divided the space into two parts: he represents Germany in one half of the studio, Poland in the other. Mirrors set up opposite each other – the visitor passes between them – reflect the German and Polish quotations fixed to them. The viewer is therefore offered a mirror-inverted view of the nations’ “typical” identities; they have been interchanged.
In addition, Zakrzewski transforms historical and political facts into abstractions. The audience is not only able to walk, symbolically, along the Polish border. They can also view a “German-Polish” night sky in the apse of the exhibition space, an experience of unity between the merging facts of national-political identity.