Via Lewandowsky
Berliner Zimmer (Shared suffering is half misery), 2002

Artist
Via Lewandowsky

Title
Berlin Room (Suffering shared is misery halved)

Year of creation
2002

Technique and dimensions
mixed media, 400 x 400 cm

Year of acquisition
2005

Via Lewandowsky actually created a "Berlin Room" for the exhibition "Berlino Nuova Città d'Arte" in Rome in 2002 and thus in a certain way translated our ambiguous exhibition title into the picture. You can see a lower-middle-class living room in the style of the 1960s. There is an oblique cut through the entire facility that stops at nothing. The cat that happens to walk across the sofa is also divided. Both parts contain something of what will later be the other. Both halves of the entire room are 50 cm apart, but are immediately recognizable as a whole. Of course, people associate the division of the room with the long division of Berlin and look for clues as to whether it is a west or east room. You have to look closely and be able to "read" the signs to realize in the end: there is no difference between East and West. In this respect, this work is also a positive interpretation of the situation in this city of Berlin.

Britta Schmitz