Lena Keller Germany, b. 1980

Lena Keller was born in 1980 in Heidelberg, Germany. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic and Media Design at DHBW Ravensburg and the Open University London before turning to fine art. From 2016 to 2022 she studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München in the class of Professor Karin Kneffel, graduating in 2022 with an honours degree as Meisterschülerin. This formation — moving from design and visual communication into painting — has left a clear mark on her practice, which treats the image as a constructed object shaped by the technologies and screens through which we encounter the world.

Keller's paintings take the classical genre of landscape as their point of departure, but redirect it toward questions of perception, mediation, and desire. Working from digital image collages rather than direct observation, she builds compositions in oil on canvas that carry the visual logic of the screen — compressed depth, heightened color, a certain frictionless luminosity — while remaining unmistakably painterly in their surface and touch. Her motifs do not represent specific places in nature; they emerge, as one exhibition text has noted, as projections in the mind of the beholder. The tension between longing for and alienation from natural habitats runs through her work as a sustained inquiry into what it means to experience landscape in an age of digital mediation. Titles such as Watching My Own Rotation, Everland, and Lux Aeterna signal this preoccupation with states of suspension, cyclical return, and an almost elegiac relationship to the visible world.

Keller's institutional recognition includes acquisition by two significant public collections: the Kunstsammlung des Deutschen Bundestages in Berlin and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München. She has received the Karl Trautmann Preis, awarded by the Kester-Haeusler-Stiftung, and a grant from the Freistaat Bayern under the Junge Kunst & neue Wege programme. Her work was included in Boxenstop2 at the Museum Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, one of Germany's foremost institutions for modern and contemporary art, and in group exhibitions at Museum Fürstenfeldbruck and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München.

Her exhibition history spans solo and group presentations across Germany, France, the United States, and South Korea. Solo exhibitions include Everland at Galerie Heckenhauer, Munich (2020); Passages at Galerie Sabine Bayasli, Paris (2022); Watching My Own Rotation at 68projects by KORNFELD, Berlin (2023); Lux Aeterna at Long Story Short Gallery, New York (2024); and Réminiscences, a duo exhibition with Magali Cazo at Galerie Bayasli, Paris (2024). Group exhibitions include Where Earth Meets Sky at König Galerie München (2025), Dear World at König Galerie, Berlin (2026), and presentations at Art Düsseldorf, Art Karlsruhe, Untitled Art Fair Miami Beach, and Art Busan, Korea.

Lena Keller is represented by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin. The gallery has presented her work at Art Karlsruhe, Art Düsseldorf, Untitled Art Fair Miami Beach, and Art Busan Korea, establishing her presence across the international art fair circuit. Her 2023 solo debut at 68projects by KORNFELD in Berlin introduced her practice to a wider audience, with critical writing noting the ambivalence between calm and uncertainty that defines her painted landscapes. Keller's practice continues to develop at the intersection of painting, digital image-making, and the enduring human need to find oneself within the natural world.