Axel Lieber (*1960 in Düsseldorf) studied sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1978 to 1984. His sculptures are inspired by objects from our everyday environment, such as furniture, clothing, packaging boxes or comic books. His works often deal with fundamental sculptural principles such as the relationship between inside and outside or the contrast between fullness and emptiness. Lieber liberates things from pure function and, through his manipulations, transfers them into a realm where unexpected connections become visible and our perception of familiar things is challenged. His work operates within the Bermuda Triangle of body, space and sculpture, where it touches on subjects as diverse as design, pop, minimalism, and even issues of identity or fashion. Through his sculptural practice, Lieber challenges entrenched categories and their dogmatic definitions. With its distinct references to modernist architecture and design, Axel Lieber’s art raises questions relating to how our private lives are interwoven with society at large, and how its ideologies have stepped into our living rooms.
After relocating to West Berlin in 1985, he co-founded the artist collective inges idee in 1993 together with Hans Hemmert, Thomas A. Schmidt and Georg Zey. inges idee works on questions of art in public space, mostly in the form of competitions and has since realized a large number of sculptures in public space in a wide variety of contexts and countries.
In 1994 he moved to Malmö, where he held a lectureship at the local art academy from 1995-1999. Teaching activities include lectures and workshops at Nordic and German art academies since 1991, and a DAAD guest professorship for the MFA program „Art in Public Space and New Artistic Strategies“ at the Bauhaus University Weimar 2006/07. Axel Lieber has shown his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1983. He held residencies in Paris, San Francisco and Porto Alegre, among others. Today he lives and works in Stockholm and Berlin.
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