Florian Leible is a German artist working across abstract painting and experimental image-making. His works emerge from a deep sensitivity to light, material and atmosphere, inviting viewers into experiences that are felt rather than explained.

Growing up in a craft-oriented family shaped his understanding of making as something grounded and meaningful. This connection to material and purpose remains visible throughout his practice. Even in abstraction, the works carry a strong sense of physical presence and human touch.

Leible’s paintings evolve through an intuitive yet attentive process in which control and openness remain in balance. Layers of color and gesture build subtle tensions between calmness and movement, creating works that unfold slowly over time.

Alongside painting, he develops experimental analogue photographic works using self-built camera objects. By allowing light to interact with organic materials, these works capture fragile encounters between chance, nature and perception.

His works invite moments of pause within contemporary life. They introduce a quiet vitality into space, inviting viewers to slow down, sense more closely and reconnect with the immediacy of the present moment.

“A PAINTING INHALES THE LIVED
MOMENT OF ITS MAKING, HOLDS ITS TENSION, ITS FRAGILITY, ITS MOVEMENT AND THEN - EXHALES IT INTO SPACE.”

Touching Water

Touching Water is an ongoing body of large-scale abstract paintings. The series reflects on fleeting moments of awareness — small encounters that bring us back into presence. Touching water, feeling air, sensing movement: simple gestures that reveal the quiet intensity of being alive.

Through subtle transitions of color, density and surface, the works explore how softness and tension can coexist within a restrained visual language. Each painting develops through a process balancing intention and release, structure and intuition.

Rather than depicting an image, the works function as quiet companions within space. They invite slowing down, breathing and sensing more carefully.Touching Water understands painting as a living encounter. A moment in which perception becomes tangible and presence can be felt again.

Holding Light

Holding Light brings together Florian Leible’s experimental analogue photographic works, extending his investigation of perception into the behavior of light itself. Rather than using photography as a tool of representation, he approaches it as a process of encounter, allowing light to unfold as an active material.

Working with self-built camera objects, Leible creates temporary environments in which light interacts with organic elements such as flower petals, leaves and natural fragments. Entering through intuitively placed openings, light moves through these materials before reaching analogue medium-format film, where it is softened, refracted and transformed.

The resulting images are traces of moments rather than depictions. They emerge from collaboration between light, matter and time. Situated between photography, painting and object-making, Holding Light continues Leible’s broader exploration of presence, inviting viewers to experience light not only as something seen, but as something felt.

SelecteD Exhibitions

2025 Disturbances, Arty Farty Gallery, Köln

2024 Nie Ohne Seife Waschen, Neurotitan Gallery, Berlin

2023 Mingbud Gallery, Hallmackenreuther, Köln

2023 Kabinett am Hafen, Kunsthafen, Köln

2023 Gruppe 69, Atelierzentrum Ehrenfeld, Köln

2022 Funkelnd wie Omas Klunker, Atelierzentrum Ehrenfeld, Köln

2022 Werkschau, Again Speicher Festival, Speicher

2021 Werkschau, Again Speicher Festival, Speicher

2022 Gruppe 69 Werkschau #6 Atelierzentrum Ehrenfeld, Köln

2020 Endlich, Atelierzentrum Ehrenfeld, Köln

Alive, 2018

“I am awake. I observe, I think, I'm emphatic, I feel and observe my feelings. I'm full of energy. I am looking for peace, finding life. I do things I am afraid of. I am a child. I dance when I can, I sing on my bike. I am open and try to recognize and feel life anew every day. I love things that are real, things that are created with love and feeling or that are love and feeling. I try to live trust, courage and love. I am alright. I am one human being of billions and I am as special as you are.”