Lukas Maksay: What Do We Do When We Get Lost In The Forest?
Born in 1999, Lukas Maksay grew up in a small town in Middle Franconia, Bavaria. Surrounded by forests and fields, these were his first contact with the world outside his parents' home. Since 2019, Maksay has been studying sculpture at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, under Wilhelm Mundt and Alicja Kwade, among others. He also studied with Hans Schabus in Vienna.
In his work, Lukas Maksay deals intensively with perception, man-made nature and its materiality. His artistic practice is characterised by conceptual clarity and a reduced, yet ambiguous aesthetic – a play with contrasts that poetically reflects the relationship between cultural continuity and transformation.
He searches for natural processes in man-made environments and man-made elements in natural environments.
The contrast between constructed objects and disintegrating objects is deliberately equated. Materials are taken from natural organisms or completely decomposed. This visual tension reflects the duality of tradition and modernity, delicacy and coarseness, memory and the present, creative power and decay.
One of the most important aspects of Lukas Maksay's work is the incompleteness of the pieces. Each work is allowed to lead its own life after its so-called “completion” and to change within that life, whereby the actual completion takes place and thus the incompleteness.
Exhibition information & Accompanying events
Presentation of the Caspar David Friedrich Prize 2025 & Opening of the prize winners' exhibition
- 11 October 2025, 2 p.m. at the Caspar David Friedrich Centre, Lange Str. 57, 17489 Greifswald
- Introduction and laudatory speech: Josephine Steinfurth, chair of the CDF Prize jury, and Helen Verhoeven, professor of painting at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts
- Admission is free.
Guided tours of the exhibition (CDFZ_contemporary)
