LINSEED 艺术家 | 卢卡斯·莱西特尔 Lukas Leichtle
卢卡斯·卢齐乌斯·莱希特尔于1995年出生在德国亚琛。他的绘画实践基于重新调整光线感的纸稿和数字图像，遵循意大利文艺复兴时期特别使用的底漆原则，逐层渲染表现出晶莹通透的视觉效果。他的作品病理性地审视现实中温柔脆弱的瞬间，充分利用人造物般的皮肤，变形的肢体语言，戏剧性的聚光和不确定的身份来调动观者的心理反应。
莱希特尔现生活和工作于柏林，并就读于柏林魏森西艺术学院油画专业。他的作品曾展出于上海LINSEED Projects（2021年）；安特卫普Newchild画廊（2021年）；柏林布鲁克博物馆（2021年）；柏林Galerie Sandra Buergel（2021年）；伦敦Samuele Visentin（个展；2021年）；伦敦Eve Leibe画廊（2021年）；柏林Weserhalle（2020年）等。他的作品被北京X美术馆；卡萨布兰卡Fondation Alliances；格斯塔德Alex Hank藏品等收藏。他的作品刊登于《Vogue》《i-D》《福布斯》杂志。他的首次机构个展也将于2023年在新亚琛艺术协会举办。
唐纳·哈拉维（Donna J. Haraway）曾针对机器与有机身体的二元关系提出质询：“为什么我们的身体应该止于皮肤，或者至多囊括由皮肤包裹着的其他存在物？”在卢卡斯·卢齐乌斯·莱希特尔（Lukas Luzius Leichtle）客观而细腻的笔触下，人体的皮肤呈现出俨然赛博格的质地，加以精心捕捉的柔软瞬间，从而制造出恐惑的悬疑氛围。
卢卡斯·莱希特尔 Lukas Leichtle
《苏雷纳肖像1/2》Recording of Soorena 2/2, 2021
亚麻布面油画，木板装裱 Oil on linen mounted on wood panel
60 x 50 cm
文/林果
卢卡斯·莱希特尔 Lukas Leichtle
《羞耻研习（正面）》Study of Shame (front), 2021
亚麻布面油画 Oil on linen
140 x 110 cm
Lukas Luzius Leichtle (b. 1995, Aachen, Germany) bases his artistic practice on the sketches and digital images after the manipulation of light, and follows the diktat of imprimatura in Renaissance Italy to embody the translucent and luminous effect through gradual layers. In his work, Leichtle has pathologically scrutinised the tender, fragile states between real moments to evoke different uncanniness through his representation of cyborgian skin, deformed body, theatrical spotlights and uncertain identity.
Leichtle lives and works in Berlin and is currently studying at the painting department of Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee. His work has been shown at LINSEED Projects, Shanghai, (2021); Newchild Gallery, Antwerpen (2021); Bruecke Museum, Berlin (2021); Galerie Sandra Buergel, Berlin (2021); Samuele Visentin, London (solo; 2021); Eve Leibe Gallery, London (2021); Weserhalle, Berlin (2020), among others. His work is in the collections of X Museum, Beijing; Fondation Alliances, Casablanca; Alex Hank Collection, Gstaad. His features have been included in Vogue magazine, i-D magazine and Forbes magazine. His first institutional solo exhibition is coming at Neuer Aachener Kunstverein (2023).
Donna J. Haraway has interrogated the obsolete machine/organism relationships: “Why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin?” In his objective and delicate brushwork, Lukas Luzius Leichtle presents human skin in a cyborgian fashion and captures soft split seconds to stimulate uncanniness in suspense.
Skin defines the partition between beings and their first point of touch. At the same time, it encapsulates egos, revealing or concealing identities. The subject matters Leichtle delineates are composed well against a nearly abstract background, in contrast with the concrete components—no matter the texture and lustre of nudes or the ornaments attached to it—under a self-possessed examination. In his meticulous paintings with an emphasis on chiaroscuro, the translucent skin turns out a porous fabric of liminality more than a separatist shell as its representation assumes a mixed form of outer reflection with inner illumination. In his drawings, due to the paper of coarse grain, the prominent highlights and unreal hues create an effect of diffuse reflection. Although Leichtle tends to work with flat digital images, his uneven strokes suggest the nuanced sentiments that different screens can mirror.
Leichtle regards painting in parallel with stage performance. He uses deformed gestures and dramaturgical spotlights to imbue his figuration with a sense of theatricality, reminiscent of the common clinical scenes in New Objectivity paintings. In his pathological gaze, he inspects the physically aggressive boxing, a highly masculine contact sport on the arena, and seizes vulnerable, repressive moments of the fighter whose headgear is protecting the head but fashioning cauliflower ears. Leichtle has hidden the fighter’s facial expression, which echoes with the faceless characters in a series of his paintings titled Study of Shame. Here, the artist investigates “shame”, a dynamic emotion in a tension between self-awareness and social discipline. By reinterpreting the recurrent nude as a vacillating figure who appears to be self-consciously aware of the surrounding intrusive gaze on him, Leichtle sheds new light on the ambivalent state of shame as a shaping force of identity.
Text by Kurt Lin