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With its pulsating beats, buoyant footage of people dancing and wearing clothes still fashionable today, Mark Lecky’s legendary "Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore" (1999) is both eternal and a product of its time. Lasting only fifteen minutes, the film splices found footage of a subculture made over roughly three decades. Even twenty-five years later, it remains relevant on many levels including music and fashion, posing the still-unanswered question: What do we do with the human thirst for experiences and youthful energy? Born in the mid-1970s, collector Julia Stoschek has described herself as a child of MTV videos, so it’s no surprise that she acquired this piece. Not to mention she has exquisite taste when choosing works.
However, this key work has only been shown once, in a group exhibition at her foundation’s Düsseldorf location. Now, Stoschek is mounting a major solo show in Berlin of this northern English artist and Turner Prize winner. The exhibition promises to be just as infectiously boisterous and enigmatic as all Leckey's work. In contrast to his Young British Artist contemporaries in London, he never cared to develop an instantly recognizable style. "Until I made 'Fiorucci', I didn’t know how to make art," Leckey says. After studying art at Newcastle Polytechnic, he stepped outside the art world for a decade.
He returned to it with this 1999 video. "I can only make something I know firsthand, that I’ve experienced," he says. Even today, he doesn’t have a studio: if he did, he’d run the risk of feeling like an artist. In fact, Leckey always wanted to make music videos, but he somehow never managed to find his feet in the music world. "Getting into art gave me that chance. I used the fact that people were interested in what I was doing visually."
Breaking into reality
Leckey’s journey into the art world wasn’t a smooth one. He was born in the 1960s in Birkenhead, a northern English harbor city near Liverpool. His subjects remain rooted in his adolescent experiences there. His material draws on the fixtures of the Thatcher era. Young people were treated with hostility, restrictiveness, and discouragement. They were too young for clubs, with too little money for restaurants, and without a place where they felt welcome. Yet being unwanted is never a reason to stay home. After all, there are bridges, streetlamps, concrete breakwater, and bus stops. These motifs can be found in Leckey’s work even today.
A recurring image is that of breaking through into reality. Leckey’s antennae for contemporary and youth culture are as sensitive as his take on medieval iconography. Doubtless he is interested in boundary-busting ecstasy—but not escapism. "Mystical experiences aren’t a form of fleeing the world," he explains. "Rather, they’re an intensified present moment. Almost divine. That’s what I look for." In "Dazzledark," one of his new films, clouds race above a stormy sea with an amusement park illuminated on the horizon.
It’s tempting, but also an unknown factor. Suddenly we find ourselves amid flashing amusement rides, neon signs, and carnival prizes including a stuffed animal with immense eyes: one of those prizes you’re not sure whether to be pleased about or not. Yet it becomes the star in a boundary-pushing experience, losing its grip on reality and almost losing its mind. Leckey always knows how to draw out divine ecstasy from dirt and trash. "I want the world to get bigger for me when I let myself believe in potential and possibilities," he says. "That’s how you feel as a kid, right? You’re overwhelmed—it’s terrifying, but also thrilling." "Enter Thru Medieval Wounds" uses video, sculpture, and sound to show how memory and imagination overlay the physical world and elicit ecstatic experiences: a gripping premise even for those who’ve never heard of MTV.
This article first appeared in Monopol's special issue on Berlin Art Week 2025.