Leon Billerbeck (*1995 in Hamburg, Germany) is an artist living and working between Germany and France. He graduated from the class of photography in the field of contemporary art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig,
Germany in 2024. In 2019, Billerbeck completed the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Media Art at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, with the interterdisciplinary work „Ataxia/Ataraxia“, which was awarded the reknown emerging artist
award „Gute Aussichten 20/21“ and shown at „Haus der Fotografie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg“. In 2017, his work „Foreign Landscapes“ won the prestigious „Carte Blanche Étudiants“ prize for young photographers awarded by Paris Photo at the Grand Palais. The following years, his works were widely shown in Galleries in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Porto, Lisbon and Vienna, to name a few. Over the past years, he has participated not only in numerous exhibitions but also in several Artist-In-Residency programs in Europe and South Korea.
Leon Billerbeck’s artistic practice is situated at the intersection of photography, installation, painting and conceptual process-based interventions. Starting from the photographic image as both material and cultural artifact, his works investigate the circulation, consumption and transformation of images within contemporary visual culture. Rather than understanding photography as a fixed medium, Billerbeck approaches the image as something performative, unstable and in constant transition — shaped by technological systems, gestures of reproduction, and ecological conditions. Through manipulations, spatial arrangements and material interventions, his works explore how images are produced, consumed and exhausted within digital and capitalist economies. Screens, found materials, discarded prints, natural elements and ephemeral traces become part of an expanded photographic practice in which the boundaries between image and object increasingly dissolve. Processes such as layering, repetition, displacement or decay function not only as formal strategies but as reflections on visibility, value and attention in an age of permanent visual overflow.
Central to his work is an interest in the circulation, preservation and disappearance of content. Through reduction, inversion, fragmentation and gestures of removal and abstraction, Billerbeck explores a poetics of absence,
emptiness and dissolution within contemporary visual culture. Archives, found images and digital traces become unstable materials that are reordered, obscured or partially erased, questioning how images persist, accumulate and fade over time. Photography becomes less a tool of only representation than a space of residue and latency, oscillating between presence and disappearance.
Positions such as Hito Steyerl, Guy Debord and Byung-Chul Han as well as Process Art, Zen Buddhism an yogic philosophy play a role as inspiration in his work.
Germany in 2024. In 2019, Billerbeck completed the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Media Art at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, with the interterdisciplinary work „Ataxia/Ataraxia“, which was awarded the reknown emerging artist
award „Gute Aussichten 20/21“ and shown at „Haus der Fotografie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg“. In 2017, his work „Foreign Landscapes“ won the prestigious „Carte Blanche Étudiants“ prize for young photographers awarded by Paris Photo at the Grand Palais. The following years, his works were widely shown in Galleries in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Porto, Lisbon and Vienna, to name a few. Over the past years, he has participated not only in numerous exhibitions but also in several Artist-In-Residency programs in Europe and South Korea.
Leon Billerbeck’s artistic practice is situated at the intersection of photography, installation, painting and conceptual process-based interventions. Starting from the photographic image as both material and cultural artifact, his works investigate the circulation, consumption and transformation of images within contemporary visual culture. Rather than understanding photography as a fixed medium, Billerbeck approaches the image as something performative, unstable and in constant transition — shaped by technological systems, gestures of reproduction, and ecological conditions. Through manipulations, spatial arrangements and material interventions, his works explore how images are produced, consumed and exhausted within digital and capitalist economies. Screens, found materials, discarded prints, natural elements and ephemeral traces become part of an expanded photographic practice in which the boundaries between image and object increasingly dissolve. Processes such as layering, repetition, displacement or decay function not only as formal strategies but as reflections on visibility, value and attention in an age of permanent visual overflow.
Central to his work is an interest in the circulation, preservation and disappearance of content. Through reduction, inversion, fragmentation and gestures of removal and abstraction, Billerbeck explores a poetics of absence,
emptiness and dissolution within contemporary visual culture. Archives, found images and digital traces become unstable materials that are reordered, obscured or partially erased, questioning how images persist, accumulate and fade over time. Photography becomes less a tool of only representation than a space of residue and latency, oscillating between presence and disappearance.
Positions such as Hito Steyerl, Guy Debord and Byung-Chul Han as well as Process Art, Zen Buddhism an yogic philosophy play a role as inspiration in his work.
Education
2020-X Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Photography in the Field of Contemporary Arts (Prof. Loretta Fahrenholz, Özlem Altin, Michael Franz)
2017-18 Escola das Artes, UCP Porto, Sound Design, Porto, Portugal.
2015-19 Bauhaus-University Weimar, BFA Media Arts & Design (Prof. Ursula Damm & Prof. Björn Dahlem)
Solo Exhibitions
10/2026 Vernissage/Finissage, Vinzenz, Vienna, Austria. (upcoming)
08/2026 The Artist Is Not Present, Art-O-Rama Off, Galerie Keller-Tourot, Marseille, France.
02/2024 … ] 3291 deleted objects [… (abwesen), Galerie Shower, Leipzig, Germany.
03/2023 Measurement Uncertainties, ARTES – MOTA GALIZA, Porto, Portugal.
10/2019 Ataxia/Ataraxia, BFA degree show, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany.
09/2018 Foreign Landscapes, Galerie Anne-Claire Simon, Paris, France.
Group Exhibitions
12/2025 System C Gallery, Marseille, France.
09/2025 Fragments of an Island, Yeosu International Art Festival, Yeosu, South Korea.
09/2025 Vernissage dans l‘espace au-dessus de la cour, Marseille, France.
05/2025 C‘est que des fleurs, PAC, Marseille, France.
07/2024 Graduate Show, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, Germany.
06/2024 Waking Life Festival, Crato, Portugal.
06/2024 Wunde Punkte, (w/ Jakob Treß), West, Vienna, Austria.
09/2023 SpreeVision/WeWater, temporary off-space, Berlin, Germany. (co-curated)
11/2022 Midnight Sun, mono lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal.
11/2022 Journey of Multitudes, Daegu Art Factory, Daegu, South Korea.
09/2022 Co_vid: Wir im Umbruch, Galerie KUB, Leipzig, Germany.
08/2022 Waking Life Festival, Crato, Portugal.
04/2022 UPS_PSU_SPU_PUS_USP, MyPlace Selfstorage, Leipzig, Germany.
02/2022 Fibre to the dirt, Annual Academy Exhibition, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, Germany.
01/2022 Gute Aussichten, Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany.
11/2021 Ein Impuls, Öffentlicher Raum, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum/Museum Ludwig, Köln, Germany.
09/2021 Welten Wende, Horror Vacuii Art Space, Leipzig, Germany.
08/2021 50/50 Brocken (w/ Jakob Kukula), CURA X ROH ART, Berlin, Germany.
07/2021 You are not the only one, Bistro 21, Leipzig, Germany.
07/2021 Welten Ende, Horror Vacuii Art Space, Leipzig, Germany.
07/2021 Polyphon (supported by Kulturstiftung des Bundes) , Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, Germany.
06/2021 Gute Aussichten, Landesmuseum Koblenz, Germany.
05/2021 Birra Gallery, Anuário‘20, Galeria Municipal Do Porto, Porto, Portugal.
03/2021 Gute Aussichten, Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany.
10/2020 Spaziergang im See, State Of The Art Festival, Hildesheim, Germany.
09/2020 Festival Für Selbstgebaute Musik, Raw Gelände, Berlin, Germany.
07/2020 Art Biesenthal, Roh Art, Biesenthal, Germany.
01/2021 Gone Fishing, De Liceiras 18, Porto, Portugal.
10/2019 Berlin Photo Week, Der Greif, Kraftwerk, Berlin, Germany.
05/2019 Streaming Pictures, Museum für angewandte Künste Köln (MAKK), Cologne, Germany.
04/2019 Republic of Spirits, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany.
03/2019 Sprung 3, ARTHOUSE.NYC, New York City, USA.
02/2019 Einfach machen! (w/ Jannis Uffrecht), Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.
12/2018 Display, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany.
11/2018 Einfach machen! (w/ Jannis Uffrecht), Public Interventions, Paris.
11/2018 Photo Brussels Festival, Hangar Art Center, Brussels, Belgium.
10/2018 Semibreve, Media Art Festival, gnration, Braga, Portugal.
07/2018 Grand Ouvert - Bauhaus Photography, Kunsthaus Erfurt, Germany.
05/2018 Osmose Spectrale, Ausstellungsraum, Vienna, Austria.
11/2017 Carte Blanche Étudiants, Paris Photo, Grand Palais, Paris, France.
10/2017 Carte Blanche Étudiants, Gare du Nord, Paris, France.
04/2017 Studio Vortex Artist Residency, Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation, Arles, France.
07/2016 Family & Madness (curated by Nina Röder), Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany.
04/2016 Agar!Agar!, Schillerpalais, Berlin, Germany.
01/2016 Mess With Tech, Sense And Thinking, Transmediale, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Berlin, Germany.
Awards & Grants
10/2026 Goethe Institute Project Grant
07/2026 OpenEye Young Entrepreneur Grant
10/2025 DAAD International Artistic Research Grant
10/2024 Erasmus + Grant
03/2024 Project Grant (Student Council, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig)
01/2023 Criatório Fund, Câmera Municipal do Porto.
02/2022 Fine Arts Project Grant (Culture Department Saxony)
09/2021 Vonovia Award for Photography (Emerging Talent Award Shortlist)
06/2021 Kultur Neustart Grant (Studentenwerk Leipzig)
01/2021 Gute Aussichten - Young German Photography.
07/2020 Bauhaus Kreativ-Fonds.
03/2020 Deutscher Jugend Fotopreis (German Youth Photo Award).
07/2017 Carte Blanche Étudiants Emerging Photographer Award by Paris Photo and Picto.
05/2020 Bauhaus Kreativ-Fonds.
04/2017 Fashion Clip Award by Bauhaus-University Weimar in Co-Operation With European Design Award.
Residencies
09-11/2024 La Déviation, Marseille, France.
01-03/2023 DELICEIRAS18/ARTES MOTA GALIZA, Porto, Portugal.
10-12/2022 Daegu Art Factory, Daegu, South Korea
06-07/2022 Røst AiR, Lofoten, Norway.
01-02/2020 DELICEIRAS18, Porto, Portugal.
03/2017 Studio Vortex (W/ Antoine D‘Agata), Arles, France.
Publications & Releases
06/2021 Good Morning Beautfiul. Good Bye World (Ataxia/Ataraxia), self-released limited cassette tape.
10/2020 Nebelsonne Meeresrausch Rausch Rausch (w/ Jakob Tress), self-published photography magazine.
01/2020 Of Vague Sketches - TAPE001, self-released limited cassette tape.
01/2018 &and (w/ Bartu Kaan Özdişçi and Adrian Fear), self-published photography magazine.
Other Activities
Since 2024 Hatha and Asthanga Yoga Teacher
Since 2020 Co-Founder of interdisciplinary arts & architecture collective “Sunburn Gaze”.
Since 2020 Member of art association “DELICEIRAS18” in Porto.
Since 2017 Co-Founder of “Carte Blanche Collective” of international emerging photographers.
Since 2016 “ROH” artist collective.
08/2016 Tutor At Bauhaus Summer School in Arts & Design.