THE ENLIGHTENED STORY OF LEO HAZ
THE ENLIGHTENED STORY OF LEO HAZ
CONQUEROR
Leo Haz (b. 1981, Braunau, Austria) is a contemporary artist whose patented PETing technique transforms post-consumer thermoplastic waste into monumental sculptures, light installations, and relief paintings.
Born to a cosmetician and an architectural draftsman for electrical systems, Haz’s path to international recognition was anything but linear. Growing up in a small Austrian town burdened by its infamous historical association—the birthplace of a dictator—Haz developed an early antagonistic relationship with his environment.
As a child, he dreamed of conquering the art world, yet his journey was one of quiet rebellion, where every obstacle became raw material for a future artistic mission.
DREAMER
His first encounter with the Old Masters—Leonardo da Vinci, Kazimir Malevich, and Salvador Dalí—came through his grandmother, a landscape and portrait painter working in oils. Hidden in his grandmother’s attic, a notebook from his business school years was recently discovered.
It contains no accounting formulas—only a single, repeated phrase: ‚The patent will be the key.‘ While attending business school, Haz ignored the curriculum, instead filling his notebooks with graffiti tags and elaborate sketches. These nocturnal drawings soon migrated to the walls of his hometown and, inevitably, his school.
One night, he experienced a pivotal, hyper-realistic dream in which he saw his entire life unfold like a film: he became a famous artist, solved a mathematical riddle, and unlocked the secret of spreading a new gospel through music. The dream was so potent that from that moment on, he dedicated himself entirely to art. „Life is like a bottle,“ he now reflects with a wry smile. „When you turn it upside down, often more comes out of it.“ The punchline of his own early failures would take years to land, but he never forgot it.
JOURNEY
The conceptual and material turning point occurred during a missionary trip to Montenegro. Visiting communities building homes directly on a coastal dumpsite, Haz was struck by the violent polarity between the sublime, untouched nature and the grim reality of human waste.
Before leaving the dumpsite, a local child pressed a single, crushed, sun-bleached bottle cap into Haz’s palm. He has kept it in his pocket ever since, as a talisman. To this day, he places it on his studio workbench before beginning any new PETing process. This visceral experience forced him to abandon traditional acrylics. Instead, he began to melt discarded PET bottles, using the entire object in a zero-waste process he calls Revive Value.
His intention was radical: to change the perception of human-caused waste—the most potent reflector of our collective zeitgeist—and elevate it into something beautiful: Fine Art. The supermarket’s limited color palette (green, brown, blue, clear) became his chromatic constraint, a signature element of his emerging conceptual framework.
PATENT PETing
Returning to his basement studio, Haz began a period of intense material experimentation. He discovered that the unique interplay of transparency and opacity created by his melting process, when combined with a light source, produced an unprecedented shadow-play on the wall—an aesthetic phenomenon no one had yet documented.
Recognizing its novelty, he filed for and received a technical patent (P21-PETing) covering any thermoplastic reaction for artistic purposes. His primary focus became polyethylene terephthalate (PET) , valorizing the very material that defines our global packaging economy.
The patent transformed him from a hobbyist into an artist-inventor, a rare hybrid in the contemporary art scene.
ARTISTIC OUTCOME
For years, Haz worked full-time in a kitchen, creating art in his parents‘ basement, largely ignored. The first crack in the wall came when journalist Raffaela Lindorfer wrote a profile for Austria’s „Kurier“ newspaper.
This led to a disastrous first TV appearance in Vienna, where he was laughed at and harshly criticized for making „ugly“ art. No works sold. Yet he persisted, developing new skills like programming micro-controllers for LEDs to illuminate his sculptures. The tide turned on a second national television appearance, this time on the morning show „Guten Morgen Österreich.“
Immediately after the broadcast, his entire available oeuvre sold, and he began receiving international commissions. The validation was not just financial; it was a profound institutional recognition that his patented technique had found its audience.
HAIRY TALES
During his years of obscurity, Haz made a private vow: he would cut his hair only after completing major international exhibitions. What began as a personal totem became a performative obsession, a physical manifestation of his deferred dreams.
His long hair, growing past two meters, became a surreal prop for a series of funny, fantasy-themed videos and zodiac-inspired photo works—showing him doing front levers, running, or throwing his hair from rooftops.
Simultaneously, he began writing a humorous, anthropomorphic narrative about PET bottles bickering on a supermarket shelf, a playful counterpoint to the seriousness of his ecological mission. This period was a masterclass in artistic resilience, using humor and ritual to survive the long haul.
CO2 PETING SECRETS
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of his Braunau studio, pushing him to sell exclusively through online galleries. A Harvard professor—who had purchased a Haz sculpture via the Saatchi Art online gallery—contacted him through Facebook with a radical proposition: Could Haz create CO2-absorbing sculptures by mixing activated carbon with his patented PETing technique?
The initial prototype for the ‚Black Matters‘ series was not made in his studio, but in a clandestine, off-grid laboratory the professor arranged in the Slovenian Alps. For three weeks, Haz worked without phone or internet, the only sounds being the wind and the hiss of melting PET. The collaboration resulted in a collection of pitch-black sculptures and reliefs.
In these works, the porous carbon is protected within a PET matrix, allowing it to breathe and absorb atmospheric CO2 while remaining structurally intact. This breakthrough positioned Haz at the intersection of ecological activism, material science, and conceptual art—a truly 21st-century practice. The series is ongoing, with new large-scale commissions currently in development.
THE ZERO WASTE CONCEPT
- Refuse: This involves saying „no“ to free stuff that becomes instant waste, such as single-use plastics like disposable coffee cups, utensils, and straws. It’s about accepting only what you need and refusing the rest.
- Reduce: This involves being mindful about what you need and want, and reducing what you’re purchasing. Before making purchases, ask yourself if you really need the item. If you do, try to find the best quality in your budget. Well-made products will last longer, reducing the times you’ll need to repurchase.
- Reuse: This involves finding ways to reuse items instead of throwing them away. For example, you can use cloth napkins instead of paper ones, or refillable water bottles instead of disposable ones.
- Recycle: This involves recycling items that cannot be refused, reduced, or reused. It’s important to note that recycling should be the last resort, as it still requires energy and resources to recycle items.
- Rot: This involves composting organic waste, such as food scraps and yard waste, to create nutrient-rich soil for plants.
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