The artistic practice of Axel Lieber develops from an interest in objects, images, and forms drawn from everyday life, which the artist subjects to processes of transformation that alter their function and perception. Through interventions that are often minimal yet radical — cuts, folds, overlays, reductions, or recompositions — Lieber challenges what we recognize as familiar, creating a gap between the original object and the new form it assumes. His work moves between sculpture, installation, and image, with particular attention to the relationship between space, representation, and point of view.

Within this broader practice, Lieber’s works involving geographical maps occupy a significant place. Traditionally associated with measurement, orientation, and an apparently objective representation of space, the map becomes, in Lieber’s hands, a material to be manipulated and rewritten. The image of the world loses its purely informational function and becomes a surface upon which the artist can act both physically and conceptually. Continents, borders, and coordinates are no longer merely elements of a system of reference, but become components of an abstract and personal composition.

As in many of Lieber’s works, the interventions on the map introduce a distance between what an image claims to represent and what it actually reveals. The transformation does not necessarily erase the original image, but rather alters its legibility, compelling the viewer to recognize it anew.

Axel Lieber

Axel Lieber was born in Düsseldorf in 1960, where he gained his MFA in sculpture at the Staatliche Kunstakademie.

Besides working as an individual artist he is a member and co-founder of the Berlin based artist-collaboration “inges idee”, which, since 1993, operates in the field of public art and has realized projects in, amongst others, Sweden, Germany, Japan, Canada and Taiwan.

Since 1991 he was teaching at several nordic and european Art Academies. He worked as a lecturer at the Malmö Art Academy between 1995-1999 and was a DAAD guest professor at the Bauhaus University Weimar in 2006.

In 2016 he became a member of the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm. He shares his time between Stockholm and Berlin.

Axel Lieber was born in Düsseldorf in 1960, where he gained his MFA in sculpture at the Staatliche Kunstakademie.

In 2016 he became a member of the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm. He shares his time between Stockholm and Berlin.

Axel Lieber was born in Düsseldorf in 1960, where he gained his MFA in sculpture at the Staatliche Kunstakademie.

In 2016 he became a member of the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm. He shares his time between Stockholm and Berlin.

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Axel Lieber

Watercolors (4.2025)

Watercolors (4.2025)

Axel Lieber

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