MASTERWORK5 Our Story

Art déjà vu, déjà new.

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I didn’t grow up in museums — I grew up inside one.

My grandfather, Johannes Lebek, was an established woodcutter whose prints now sit quietly in the archives of the Stanford Library.
He was brilliant. He was broke. That’s art for you.

My parents, meanwhile, were Catholic conservatives who viewed modern art with the same distrust they held for Rock music, Willy Brandt, and anything else that dared to rattle the sturdy Ordnung of postwar Germany.

Ironically, as a teenager, I once bought a book titled “Kunst kommt nicht von Können”, which insisted that modern art was less about craft and more about intellectual mischief. I didn’t know it then, but that little provocation would come full circle decades later — in Dafen, where entire centuries of art history are painted by hand with breathtaking skill, disproving the book’s thesis with every brushstroke.

Naturally, I adored Warhol. And Beuys, among many other iconoclasts. And naturally, I made myself the family’s resident heretic.

Eventually, I escaped: first into fashion photography, then into New York, where I haunted the Chelsea openings like a friendly ghost with a camera. Art was everywhere, and for a while, so was I.

Then came China. An artist friend whispered the magic words “Dafen Village”—the world’s most concentrated microcosm of painters, craft, chaos, and history.

When I arrived, I had two thoughts: This is incredible.
Why is everyone obsessed with van Gogh?

And then I met Lu Zu Fa — a generous soul with a steady hand, a sharp eye, and zero fear of da Vinci.
On a whim, I asked him to paint me a Mona Lisa.
A rite of passage. A Dafen baptism.
She arrived.
She stared.
She conquered.
One Mona Lisa became a Holbein.
A Caravaggio.
Another da Vinci.
Then Basquiat. Then graffiti.
My office slowly turned into a private museum curated by… well… me.
Every morning, I now walk into my small gallery:
A Mona Lisa by my laptop — a daily reminder of Renaissance ambition.
A Caravaggio by my workout bench — dramatic lighting included.
A few Basquiats nearby spiking my dopamine playing the drums.
And somewhere in between, I realized:

Why am I the only one having this much fun?
So I built MASTERWORK5.
Not as a factory of fakes — but as a celebration of craft, of culture, of impossible skill. A collaboration with artists who deserve far more than the industry gives them. A gentle rebellion against the “cult of originals” that locks beauty behind velvet ropes.

China lost a lot of art during the Cultural Revolution.

I like to think I’m re-importing a little bit of the soul.
Call me Marco Polo with better lighting.

MASTERWORK5 is my ode to artists, rebels, romantics, renegades, and anyone who still believes a painting — even a lovingly hand-painted reproduction — can change how a room feels.
Or how a morning feels.

Welcome to my gallery.
Please linger.
Please enjoy.
Please keep your elbows off the Caravaggio.