Adrian Leverkuhn

Context

Curriculum Vitae

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Adrian Leverkuhn

Emotive Ecosystems

These artworks simulate complex adaptive systems, such as those found in natural ecosystems, our bodies, or our relationships. Two human silhouettes move and collide on the surface of a canvas-like, self-contained object, powered by an integrated computer running custom software. The figures play out distinct stories through the nearly infinite scenarios that unfold. Once started, the movements are impossible to predict and very unlikely to repeat. These installations are designed to run continuously.

A Cosmology of You

A collaborative installation about media, sight, and culture. Projections, painting, 6-channel sound.

Collaborators: Thomas Masters and Liviu Pasare

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Bio

Adrian Leverkuhn is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, code, sound, and installation. His practice is characterized by peripatetic movement. Trained in printmaking from age ten and shaped by sustained engagement with art history, Leverkuhn has worked under multiple pseudonyms since the late 1990s, maintaining separate identities for net art, netlabel music releases, and commercial gallery work. This deliberate fragmentation is a position against personal branding and the commodification of artistic identity.

Leverkuhn began in a South Side Chicago collective where he organized his first group and collaborative shows, among them an eight-channel sound and projection environment with live painting. Between 2010 and 2015, he mounted solo exhibitions at Thomas Masters Gallery: The Age of Treason (2012) addressed the erosion of shared concepts of truth; Isomorphica (2013) used paradigm-shifting historical events as compositional frameworks; Painting? (2014) interrogated medium specificity from first principles. He makes Code Paintings, executable code printed on canvas (a form of code poetry), and Emotive Ecosystems, generative, computer-based installations.

Collaborative work has included sound design for choreographers, theaters, and projection installations. He collaborated with Thomas Masters on the sound environment for Marco Nereo Rotelli's large-scale projections on Chicago's Field Museum (2017). With Liviu Pasare, Anikka Lachman, and Thomas Masters, he created This Side of the Mountain (2013), a three-part projection mapping installation. He contributed to productions by Collaboraction, Chicago's social justice theater company. Additional residencies include Giorgio Upiglio (Milan, 2013) and JO-HS (Mexico City, 2019).

Leverkuhn completed a residency at Arroz Estúdios (Lisbon, 2023–2024), where he provided technical infrastructure and curatorial support for digital arts programming. He participated in CURRENTS New Media Festival (Santa Fe, 2022). A 2023 exhibition A Cosmology of You at ALMA Art Gallery in Chicago featured six-channel sound based on a distorted Adorno composition, and projection mapping. He is currently a member of the La Vie Sauvage collective in L'Île-Saint-Denis and lives in Brittany.

Selected CV

Full CV available by request

Education

School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Scholarship)

Studied printmaking and sound

Faculty: Nicolas Collins, Bob Snyder, Joseph Grigely, James Elkins

Truman College, Chicago

Solo Exhibitions

2022 Zorra, Arroz Estúdios, Lisbon

2019 Fluid Alliances, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2018 Light Touch 2, University Club of Chicago

2017 Light Touch, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2015 Studies of Night and Fog, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2014 Painting?, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2013 Isomorphica, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2012 The Age of Treason, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2012 Alliance, University Club of Chicago

2010 Palimpsest, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

Selected Group Exhibitions

2024 Connections, Zhou B Art Center, Chicago

Demoscene-inspired ASCII art on canvas

2023 A Cosmology of You, ALMA Art Gallery, Chicago

Six-channel sound based on distorted Adorno composition; projection mapping

2022 Currents New Media, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Light Touch – light sculpture and new media installation

2022 Luz, Jo-hs Gallery, Mexico City

2021 Rare Effect, Arroz Estúdios, Lisbon

2020 Gruen Galleries, Chicago

2018 Collaboraction Theater Company, Chicago (drawings for production)

2016 Babel, Galerie Garnier-Delaporte, Chavignol, France

2015 Babel, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2015 Life Lines, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2013 Progetto Milano, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2013 20 Years, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2013 Divina Natura, Field Museum, Chicago (collaborative project with Marco Nereo Rotelli)

2008 15 Years, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2006 Kasia Kay Art Projects, Chicago

2006 Nova, Chicago

2006 Scope, New York

Collaborative Exhibitions

2016 This Side of the Mountain 3, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2015 This Side of the Mountain 1, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2011 Shapes in the Water, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago

2005 Deviation 05, New Context, Chicago

2004 Standard Deviation, Texas Ballroom, Chicago

2003 Quadtone, Texas Ballroom, Chicago

Residencies

2023-2024 Arroz Estúdios, Lisbon, Portugal

Technical infrastructure and curatorial support for digital arts programming

2021 JO-HS, Mexico City, Mexico

2016 David Gista Studio, Savigny-sur-Braye, France

2013 Giorgio Upiglio, Milan, Italy

Film & Sound

2022 Baby My in the time of... for Thomas Masters & Silvia Makita

Experimental spoken word soundscape

2016 This Side of The Mountain, Album (Out Of Obscure Records, OOOLP009)

Synths and treatments; collaboration with Anikka Lachman (violin, vocals) and Thomas Masters (guitars, vocals, synths). Recorded at Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago. Used as soundtrack for projection-mapped gallery performance (2013).

2015 Sound for Marco Nereo Rotelli, Parma, Italy

Large-scale projection sound environment

2011 Lightbox (one.dot9.ca netlabel)

Dub/ambient techno collaboration with Aaron McCammon (Plosive)

2010 Michael Saints, Film

Composer and editor (directed by Katie Mahalic)

2010 Documentary on Magdalena Abakanowicz

Editor (directed by Agnieszka Ziemacka)

2011 The Vacuum Kid, Film

Lighting design

Netlabel

2008–2011 one.dot9.ca

Album artwork and design:

• [one029] Karl–Johan Nilsson – The Seams

• [one023] Loscil (Scott Morgan) – Stases (Drones 2001-2005)

• [one017] Emil Klotzsch – Sandkorn

Get in touch

For enquiries about available work, exhibitions, or commissions.

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