11.10.2025 –
26.10.2025
SOLID ILLUSION – Work presentation by Esther Rosenboom and Lukas Liese, the receipients of the 27th Bernhard Heiliger Scholarship
Opening: 10 October 2025 at 18:00
About the Exhibition
In honour of the sculptor Bernhard Heiliger, the Bernhard Heiliger Foundation awards an annual scholarship to sculptors from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the Berlin Weißensee School of Art, where Heiliger taught. This goes in combination with a public presentation of the Scholarship recipients’ works in Heiliger’s former studio in the East Wing of Kunsthaus Dahlem.
This year, the jury of the Bernhard Heiliger Foundation selected, from a pool of 37 outstanding applicants, two artists – one from each of the universities: Esther Rosenboom (UdK) and Lukas Liese (Weißensee School of Art).
In collaboration, the artists developed the exhibition concept Solid Illusion for the space of Heiliger’s former studio.
Location
Scholarship Recipients
Esther Rosenboom (*1994) studied fine art at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle and at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), where she graduated with distinction in 2024 as a master student of Prof. Karsten Konrad. Her work was awarded a scholarship from the Dorothea Konwiarz Foundation (2023). Her most recent exhibitions include Förderpreis Junge Kunst, Berlin (2025), Galerie Siedlarek, Frankfurt (2024), Zionskirche, Berlin (2023), Galerie Evelyn Drewes, Hamburg (2023) and Villa Heike, Berlin (2022). She lives and works in Berlin.
The artist develops a sculptural practice that understands drawing as a sculptural medium. Using pencil and large-format paper, she creates precise, symmetrical compositions reminiscent of architectural and technical structures. Layering creates filigree, two-dimensional structures that evoke an ambivalent spatiality.
Her work explores the relationship between space, perception and imagination, deliberately eschewing classical perspective. In this way, she opens up quiet, concentrated pictorial spaces between structure and dissolution. Instead of working with physical volume, Rosenboom designs space as an idea. In her presentations, the drawings become installative objects in space.
Lukas Liese (*1991) has been living and working in Berlin since 2010. He studied sculpture at the Berlin Weißensee School of Art and at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In 2019, he graduated as a master student of Prof. Else Gabriel and has been working as an artist in Berlin since then. He has realized several projects for art in the public space and participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, among others in the Goethe Institute Beijing, Uferhallen Berlin, Bärenzwinger Berlin, Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, Warte für Kunst in Kassel or Galerie Mazzoli Berlin. He has also curated several group exhibitions, including in the Berlin exhibition spaces Spoiler and Zentrale. For his work, he has been awarded, among others, the Neustart Plus Fellowship of the Stiftung Kunstfonds (2023), the Elsa Neumann Fellowship of the State of Berlin (2020) and the Mart Stam Prize (2018).
The artist primarily uses stone as a material in his artistic practice that often addresses various social phenomena. By emphasizing the presence of stone in the space, its geological properties, and its relevance to art and cultural history, Liese creates an interplay between the content and the material, adding multiple layers to his works. Besides classical stone sculpting tools, Liese also works with digitally controlled tools and chemicals for his sculptures and reliefs.
