September 6th - November 15th, 2025
Ultra | Lukas Liese
Galerie Mazzoli // Eberswalder Str. 30, Berlin
Lukas Liese was born in Munich, Germany in 1991, lives and works in Berlin since 2010.
He primarily uses stone as a material in his artistic practice that often addresses various social phenomena. By emphasizing the presence of stone in the space, its geological properties, and its relevance to art and cultural history, Liese creates
an interplay between the content and the material, adding multiple layers to his works. Besides classical stone sculpting tools, Liese also works with digitally controlled tools and chemicals for his sculptures and reliefs.
Liese studied sculpture at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee and at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In 2019, he graduated as a „Meisterschüler" of Prof. Else Gabriel and has been working as an artist in Berlin since then.
PRESS RELEASE
Galerie Mazzoli is pleased to present Ultra, the second solo exhibition by Lukas Liese in the Berlin gallery spaces.
Working primarily with Carrara marble, the artist has created a series of new works that explore the tension between urban visual culture, collective identity, and sculptural form. A colorful line of painted marble reliefs runs through the gallery like a guiding system. On these, Lukas Liese transfers overlapping stickers collected from various urban locations. He finds his motifs
on traffic lights, street signs, utility boxes, and bus stops.
These are layered messages, scratched stickers, and both accidental and deliberate traces of everyday
life, protest, advertising, territorial disputes, and the struggle for attention and meaning. They merge
into an anarchic space of communication. Detached from their original creators, anonymous messages
are repeated, relocated, and set into new contexts. Liese takes these constellations as his material and
transforms them into colorful marble reliefs that capture these sedimented voices of public space in
condensed form.
In the sculpture Curva Nord, Liese presents a miniature of the fan curve of the Stadio dei Marmi in
Carrara, showing a choreography of the active fan scene he observed during a working residency. The
stadium as an architectural gathering space is also reflected in a walkable marble fragment, while a lifesized portrait relief of a football ultra captures a fragment of the collective that shapes the space.
The stadium itself acts as a complex resonance space for social dynamics. It stages contradictions
between public and private spheres, control and chaos, harmony and violence. As a highly regulated
space with security architecture, surveillance, and economic exploitation, it also serves as the stage for
an emotionally charged spectacle, where ideology, commerce, and community collide. In Liese’s
works, these tensions are condensed into sculptural forms, revealing the stadium not only as a place of
sport but also as a societal and political projection surface.
Overall, the works combine urban and subcultural snapshots with the historically charged materiality
of marble, opening visual spaces between the street, the stadium, and the exhibition space.
Graphic Design by Katharina Reinsbach.
