Nicole and Claus-Peter Malek

The Maleks: CONTRADICTION – Stillness & Movement
In this professionally curated exhibition, artist couple Nicole and C.-P. Malek present a selection
of black-and-white photographs and moving images whose main focus is on the emergence,
presence and absence, and amplification and suppression of movement. The underlying theme
is the natural contrast between stillness and movement, fleetingness and eternity. Dancers
are juxtaposed or interact with trees and waves. Dynamics and deceleration accompany the
visitor on his walk through the Zündorf tower and let him become a part of the presentation
in a very active way. What exactly they want to achieve can best be expressed in the words
of the artist couple themselves: „Calmness and movement are two states that condition and
exclude each other. (…) To depict both, the lively energy, the powerful stillness – that is the
goal of this exhibition.“
But the contrasts do not end in the motifs of the works presented, but extend to the technical
realization: with photography and printing techniques partly dating from the 19th and early
20th centuries, taken with large and sometimes very heavy medium and large format cameras,
developed and exposed by the artists themselves, printed in laborious and precisely planned
manual work. A wide variety of high quality papers, handmade glass, black lacquered iron
sheet and fabric panels serve as the photographic ground.
Let yourself be taken on a journey through time, move with the exhibited works – experience
their acceleration and deceleration – and get to know the artistic, artistic world of the Maleks.
And grant the two artists a wish: „We‘d love to meet other people whose hearts are as attached
to art and analog photography as ours are.“