on view: Nadine Karl at Künstlerverein Malkasten

The video work »the layers« and the installation »present is fragile« come together in an interconnected presentation by Nadine Karl and Majo Caporaletti at Künstlerverein Malkasten, unfolding across the Rotunda and the Vitrine at Hentrichhaus.

»the layers« offers insight into the cross-continental collaboration between the two artists. Developed through live online meetings between Germany and Argentina, the work brings together fragments of dialogue and conceptual exchange in a 12-minute video loop. These conversations are overlaid with footage from the Atacama Desert, a landscape that deeply informed both artists during their residency at the La Wakaya Current Residency in Chile. The video reflects shared experiences as well as differing perspectives shaped by distance, while engaging with questions of memory and temporality. Rather than understanding the past as something fixed or distant, the work approaches it as continuously reconstructed in the present – forming layered temporal structures in which memory, image, and thought overlap.

This conceptual framework continues in »present is fragile«, where the vitrine becomes a liminal space between past and future, and between reality and fiction. Memories from the artists’ time in the Chilean desert reappear within the works, making remembrance tangible while holding it open for the future, echoing museum vitrines that preserve fragile artefacts across generations. Within the installation, materials and images enter into shifting relations: Karl’s glass objects placed in sand evoke connections between object, body, and landscape, while Caporaletti’s paintings unfold as layered scenes oscillating between dream and reality. Together, they reflect on the instability of collective memory, which is constantly reshaped through social and political conditions.

Across both works, fragility becomes a central condition – not as loss, but as a continuous state of attention, care, and transformation. Temporal layers dissolve into one another, while the present emerges as a site where past and future are continuously negotiated. With reference to a curatorial text by Lilith Bitzer

»present is fragile«

Installation in the Vitrine at Hentrichhaus

Exhibition Opening
Join us for the opening on June 2 at 7 PM

Exhibition Dates
June 2 – August 25

Visiting Hours
Monday to Sunday, 12–9 PM

Künstlerverein Malkasten
Jacobistraße 6a, 40211 Düsseldorf

Curated by Lilith Bitzer

 »the layers« 

Screening in the Rotunda at Hentrichhaus

Exhibition Dates
May 12 – June 16

Visiting Hours
Monday to Sunday, 12–9 PM

Künstlerverein Malkasten
Jacobistraße 6a, 40211 Düsseldorf

Curated by Myriam Thyes