different – Maik + Dirk Löbbert

The photo works by the brothers Maik and Dirk Löbbert are no less to the point in their appearance than the installations. The approach remains the same at the core. Pure geometry collides with reality. The pure surface on images of three-dimensionality. Abstract signs on the representational means of illusion. A subtle rupture arises from the greater freedom that allows geometry, surface, abstraction to make unexpected capers in photography. The contrast ignites a witty pictorial dialogue that never ceases to amaze. Crucially, the geometry nowhere collages mere gags. Each photo already provides surfaces that are capable of dialogue: House walls, roofs, walls, pathways, a frontal scaffolding. The play with space is thus kept within the bounds of carefully calculated, form-secure irritation and avoids the surreal poetry of the disparate or an excess of fantasy. This pictorial joke operates with nuances, and that is precisely why it strikes so powerfully. It looks for guidelines on which the surface can find a foothold and become firmly integrated. All the photographic pieces, for all their affinity with the installations, draw their autonomy from this. Even more, they condense the artistic dialectic of surface and space and thereby also illuminate the treatment of architecture.

(Manfred Schneckenburger, from: Die Liebe zur Geometrie in der unvollkommenen Architektur. In: Maik und Dirk Löbbert. Ausst.-Kat. Städtische Galerie Lüdenscheid 1993)