Felix Leon Westner’s mural work, created during a brief two-day stay, transforms the backyard of Suburbia Contemporary Barcelona into a vibrant site-specific installation. Spanning several walls, the work consists of multiple text-based pieces. Rather than a single unified image, the mural unfolds as a constellation of poetic phrases, gestures, and visual rhythm—echoes of his live performance practice captured in paint. This backyard intervention marks a unique departure in Westner’s practice, expanding his language of performance into a spatial, permanent form that still pulses with the immediacy of the ephemeral.
Felix Leon Westner’s performances are socio-critical multimedia collages of words, drawings and several live generated tracks, using his own voice and a looper. Each performance is a mainly improvised, unique piece and the point of reference is often the exhibition venue or the events meta topic itself. This is the basis of his working practice and at the same time it forms the material for his visual work.
His practice oscillates between vibrancy and concretism. The sound and the sketches are interwoven but also seem to emend each other. The words that grow out of the rushing discourse of noise can form sentences that end up as slogans in his drawings. Or they become shortened again or crossed out (which happens a lot and is a key tool of how Felix Leon molds sentences out of words, meanings out of language – and the other way around).
In between concrete poetry, music and visualization, the mutual inspirations of acoustic and visual stimuli have become an eternal, almost inexhaustible, feedback loop for Felix Leon. His works have been shown in several renowned galleries and institutions over the last years.
Felix Leon Westner was born 1983 in Georgsmarienhütte wich is near Osnabrück, he didn’t spend much time there, moved a lot with his mother who was an actress, 1998 he ended up in Munich, finished school earlier, apprenticeship as a metal worker, played drums, drew on walls, listened mainly to hip hop/dancehall and drum’n bass, tried to be friends with his father, was babysitting his stepbrother and watched TV, bouncer at a bar named Rakete where his bike got stolen, wrote and drew what people talked about late at night, listened to electronic music/new wave and house, traveled to India, Indian pop/goa trance and traditional chanting, came back after nine month, played in a band again (funk), 2007 finally studied fine arts (worked at fairs as a stand builder to afford that), overpainted fair advertisements, played in a band again (open genre), worked with video, worked with traces, drew traces, used text in drawings, tried to write songs, still in Munich, often times in Leipzig, worked with Julius Heinemann, in Cairo for some time, listened to depressive electronic music, studied with Olaf Nicolai, installations vs performances, spent time in Hamburg because of love, 2010 he became a father of a daughter (Mathilda) with his partner Sarah Lehnerer, caring for the daughter, suddenly lots of family around, 2014 moved to Vienna together, less family around, started drawing more, made music with Bernhard Rappold and Carlos Vasconcelos, tried to understand noise music, Bavarian State Prize, performed a lot, drew on walls again, 2015 moved to Berlin together but separated but lived together, moved out, moved in, listened to techno, found a cat for the daughter, supported by Collection Born, worked at a framers shop to make a living, framed most of his works, first proper studio, first broken car, bigger but cold studio, different works, performance and drawing, locked down, unframed most of his works, first biennale (without physical presents), performing less, still living in Berlin, recently got a wisdom tooth out…