Simon Lehner
Images
Biography
Auto - Icon (Iteration III), 2025
Working across sculpture, painting and installation, Simon Lehner’s practice interrogates the relationship between the image-onslaught of the information age and psychic inner life. His research probes algorithm-accelerated echo chambers as they evolve into mainstream social doctrines. Lehner’s interest in internet subcultures first emerged from a desire to come to terms with his own psychology and childhood experiences, addressing the construction of identity occurring in these spaces.
Lehner’s films and paintings are created through a unique process developed by the artist: he aggregates thousands of images from both personal and internet-sourced archives to construct dynamic avatars in interactive digital environments. His paintings emerge through a collaboration with a modified robotic router, carving out topographic surfaces that are disrupted by painterly gestures where the artist’s hand and the machine’s meet. Emblematic of the technological era in which they are made, the sophisticated layering of Lehner’s works complicates our ability to distinguish depth and authorship, real from simulation, truth from falsehood.
Lehner’s films and paintings are created through a unique process developed by the artist: he aggregates thousands of images from both personal and internet-sourced archives to construct dynamic avatars in interactive digital environments. His paintings emerge through a collaboration with a modified robotic router, carving out topographic surfaces that are disrupted by painterly gestures where the artist’s hand and the machine’s meet. Emblematic of the technological era in which they are made, the sophisticated layering of Lehner’s works complicates our ability to distinguish depth and authorship, real from simulation, truth from falsehood.
Simon Lehner (b. 1996, Wels, Austria) received his Mag.Art in Photography and Time-based Media at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. Recent solo exhibitions include Of Peasants & Basterds, Edel Assanti, London, UK (2025); Clean Thoughts. Clean Images, Foto Arsenal Wien, Vienna, Austria (2025); My Mountain Has No Summit, KOW, Berlin, Germany (2024); I love you like an image, Kunstpalais Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany (2023); I’m a liar, but a good one, KOENIG2 by_robbygreif, Vienna, Austria (2021); To cut a blind spot, Fotohof, Salzburg, Austria (2021); Men don’t play / Men do play, Westlicht Museum, Vienna, Austria (2020); The mind is a voice, Bildraum 01, Vienna, Austria (2020); How far is a lightyear?, Art Genève, Ruinart Prize exhibition, Geneva, Switzerland (2019). Recent institutional group exhibitions include On the New, Belvedere 21, Vienna, Austria (2024); yours truly, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany (2023); Zeit, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland (2023); Expect the Unexpected, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2023); Photolux Festival, Lucca, Italy (2022); Pattern Recognition, Kunstpalais Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany (2022); Ars Electronica Festival, Salzamt, Vienna, Austria (2021); How far is a lightyear?, Rencontres d’Arles, Arles, France (2019). Lehner’s work is in the permanent collections of Vontobel Bank AG - Urs Stahel, Wiener Städtische Insurance, and Oberösterreichische Landesmuseum. In 2025, a monograph of his work will be published by Spector Books (Leipzig, Germany) to accompany his solo exhibition at Foto Arsenal Wien.
Works
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Echo Chamber (Iteration III), 2025 -
Peasant Painting I, 2025
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The Backrooms, 2025
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Auto - Icon (Iteration III), 2025
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Community, 2025
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Ethics of Images, 2025
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Echo Figure (Gray matter cycle), 2023
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Gorgon Script, 2023
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Auto - Icon (Iteration II), 2023
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Echo Figure (Grey matter cycle II), 2023
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Worldfamous (Iteration I), 2023
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Intro Scene I (Family Gathering), 2023
Media
