Lucas Leffler

b. 1993, Belgium

Lucas Leffler is a visual artist who lives and works in Brussels. He studied photography in professional high-school HELB in Brussels and he completed the master programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (BE). Leffler's work questions the nature of the photographic image, through its production’s processes, techniques and history.

His work is stimulated by a fascination for the materiality of photography and its bivalent nature close to alchemy, between the scientific and the magic dimension. He has experimental practice of the photo medium which he tends to expand to other forms like sculpture or installation. He takes inspiration in myths and facts, often linked to photography in order to reenact history and to create new stories.

Lucas Leffler uses earth, in a completely surprising manner, by applying it to photography in an experimental form. Mud, which is collected in what remains of the Zilverbeek (‘silver stream’), where the Agfa-Gevaert photographic plant has been dumping its argentiferous waste water for several decades, is then mixed with photosensitive material, on which the artist projects silver images that are halfway between poetry and documentary. His photo-paintings depict the history of pollution, but also talk about burial and the memory of the soil, which retains traces of human activities.

Leffler’s work has been exhibited at Contretype (Brussels) Elysée Museum (Lausanne, CH), FOMU (Antwerp, BE), Hangar Photo Art Center (Brussels, BE), and also in many art fairs like Art Paris 2021, Paris Photo 2021, Unseen Amsterdam 2021 and salon Approche. His book Zilverbeek (Silver Creek) was released in autumn 2019 with Dutch publisher The Eriskay Connection.

Lucas Leffler is a visual artist who lives and works in Brussels. He studied photography in professional high-school HELB in Brussels and he completed the master programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (BE). Leffler's work questions the nature of the photographic image, through its production’s processes, techniques and history.

His work is stimulated by a fascination for the materiality of photography and its bivalent nature close to alchemy, between the scientific and the magic dimension. He has experimental practice of the photo medium which he tends to expand to other forms like sculpture or installation. He takes inspiration in myths and facts, often linked to photography in order to reenact history and to create new stories.

Lucas Leffler uses earth, in a completely surprising manner, by applying it to photography in an experimental form. Mud, which is collected in what remains of the Zilverbeek (‘silver stream’), where the Agfa-Gevaert photographic plant has been dumping its argentiferous waste water for several decades, is then mixed with photosensitive material, on which the artist projects silver images that are halfway between poetry and documentary. His photo-paintings depict the history of pollution, but also talk about burial and the memory of the soil, which retains traces of human activities.

Leffler’s work has been exhibited at Contretype (Brussels) Elysée Museum (Lausanne, CH), FOMU (Antwerp, BE), Hangar Photo Art Center (Brussels, BE), and also in many art fairs like Art Paris 2021, Paris Photo 2021, Unseen Amsterdam 2021 and salon Approche. His book Zilverbeek (Silver Creek) was released in autumn 2019 with Dutch publisher The Eriskay Connection.

Lucas Leffler uses earth, in a completely surprising manner, by applying it to photography in an experimental form. Mud, which is collected in what remains of the Zilverbeek (‘silver stream’), where the Agfa-Gevaert photographic plant has been dumping its argentiferous waste water for several decades, is then mixed with photosensitive material, on which the artist projects silver images that are halfway between poetry and documentary. His photo-paintings depict the history of pollution, but also talk about burial and the memory of the soil, which retains traces of human activities.

Leffler’s work has been exhibited at Contretype (Brussels) Elysée Museum (Lausanne, CH), FOMU (Antwerp, BE), Hangar Photo Art Center (Brussels, BE), and also in many art fairs like Art Paris 2021, Paris Photo 2021, Unseen Amsterdam 2021 and salon Approche. His book Zilverbeek (Silver Creek) was released in autumn 2019 with Dutch publisher The Eriskay Connection.

— Selected works