Lukas Luzius Leichtle

Lukas Luzius Leichtle resided at the Santozeum in early September 2026, preparing new work that will be presented in Paris in autumn 2026.

His paintings are close, quiet studies of the body and skin. He builds them up slowly, in many thin layers, then works the surface by hand with sandpaper — giving the paintings a soft, worn texture. The images are intimate, sometimes a little unsettling, and always closely observed.

Leichtle (b. 1995, Aachen) lives and works in Berlin. He studied painting at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, graduating in 2024, after starting out in graphic design. Many of his paintings begin as photographs of his own hands and skin, which he collages and simplifies on an iPad before he ever picks up a brush — less interested in the photographic likeness than, as he’s put it, “the idea of a hand.” To work the paint once it’s down, he reaches for tools closer to a manicure kit than a studio: sandpaper, an electric nail file, cuticle pushers.

His recent exhibitions include a solo show at CCA Berlin titled Eindringling (Intruder) and Schwellen (Thresholds) at Jan Kaps in Cologne, where paintings of hands, skin, and bunched fabric pushed further into abstraction. “A contact needs to have a consequence,” he has said of the way touch and pressure shape his images.

At Santozeum, Leichtle continued this same slow, hands-on process — layering, sanding, and looking — as he developed the body of work he will show in Paris.