Born in Bonn in 1970, Jens Liebchen has been living in Berlin since the early 1990s. He studied Social anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin and turned his attention exclusively to photography in 1995. From 2010 to 2013 he lived and worked in Japan.
Read MoreHis works have been exhibited in numerous international individual and group exhibitions. Politics & Art-Art & Politics attracted particular attention and was presented on tour across the world by the Goethe-Institut. Books are a main focus of his work, the book DL07-Stereotypes of War: A Photographic Investigation is prominently presented in Parr/ Badgers The Photobook - A History. Jens Liebchen was part of the project The La Brea Matrix in Los Angeles. Over the last few years, Liebchen has held a number of workshops for the Goethe-Institut. His works are represented in national and international collections, including the art collection of the German Bundestag, DZ Bank Kunstsammlung Frankfurt, Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA).
His time spent living in Tokyo, from 2010 until 2013, provided him with a reflective insight into Japanese society and culture. While in Tokyo and at the heart of the metropolis, he produced his System series. In the outer part of the Imperial Palace Garden, Liebchen photographed pine trees during a blizzard. For Jens Liebchen, the trees have an exemplary function. Shaped systematically, they thus correspond to social norms and in this sense cast a re ection on society as a whole.
In addition to the System series, the gallery is also exhibiting works from the Tsukuba-Narita 2011/03/13 series. The series is Liebchen's immediate artistic reaction to the earthquake-tsunami-reactor-catastrophe in Japan in March 2011 and questions the medial truthfulness of images in the content of global news reporting. Almost like a road movie, the images present in chronological sequence the view from a bus window while travelling to Narita Airport outside of Tokyo.
