Artist interview with Lars Rosenbohm
with questions from the curator Felicitas von Richthofen, January 2025
The exhibition “There are possibilities so true and untrue” in the foyer of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld shows current works by the Bielefeld artist Lars Rosenbohm (*1971 in Lemgo) from 15.03.25 to 15.6.25. Heads, eyes, mouths, organic structures and physical fragments meet in a game of presence and concealment. Billowing hair, pulsating veins, internal organs, cells and amoeba-like creatures interweave with tentacles, bacteria, plants or clouds. Powerfully to the point and at the same time infused with fragile delicacy. Large, curved painterly gestures spread out pulsatingly on the canvas. Always dominated or framed by deep black. In overpaintings, fragmentations and additions, his motifs merge into a complex visual language that combines opposites, brings the uncertain and ambivalent to the fore, opens up further possibilities and invites an individual approach.
How does it all begin?
Everything starts with emptiness. And the fact that I always have to overcome myself to get started. In most cases, this starts with a line or dash. For larger formats it can also be a paint spill. Or color that is pressed through the fabric from behind . The traces that emerge on the front form the basis for continuing.
How do you develop your motifs?
My pictorial motifs are created in a drawing-painting process as an interplay between formulation and partial overlapping in sometimes more sometimes less transparent layers. I am reacting to what happened before. In between are phases of observation, but also spontaneous actions. Over the years, I have developed a vocabulary of forms that is used in variations and supports the content.
How are drawing and painting connected?
I would describe myself as an artist who draws and uses certain elements and materials of painting. Sometimes the drawings predominate, sometimes the paintings. Within this back and forth, I found my language. The contour that consolidates a form and the black of the ink often play a role, actually always . The surface allows me to push something back and emphasize something else. To a certain extent I clarify the situation for myself with the help of the line and the two-dimensional layers.
What do we see?
I can say that I am interested in certain processual contrasts and when an ambivalence is expressed. I show and at the same time I conceal again. I combine the experienced and the imagined. Memories, current affairs, interior, exterior. I’m giving something away. I am preoccupied by the uncertain, the intangible. Even scary things. Spreading. Movement, energy, strength and control. The mask or veil as a motif has been appearing in my work for years. And thus beings somewhere between human, animal and fantasy figure. They are questions to myself.
What does the title of the exhibition “There are possibilities so true and untrue” mean?
As soon as I start drawing and deal with what I have created, this is true for me. Although I formulate motifs that spring from my imagination and my thoughts and which are therefore unreal. A drawing is also an expression and the visualization of decisions that I have made. The exhibition title, which comes from the text from a friend about my work reflects very well for me that a simultaneity of opposites in one thing, one motif, one image is possible. There is not just one or the other. It must be open. For art, I even find that decisive. Therein lies its quality.
Is there a central message?
I experience my artistic work more and more as a playful liberation process. In the jury’s statement on the awarding of an art prize was written: “Rosenbohm’s drawings are characterized by the anarchic attitude of punk, but also by the imagination of Pop, which nourishes his drawings with everyday forms, often combined with humor.” I liked that. So basically anything is possible. That is sometimes unsettling, but above all refreshing. It’s about freedom and openness. Including all efforts and contradictions.
Rosenbohm’s haunting, sometimes disturbing depictions explore the human condition and reflect experiences of our time. He poses questions about identity, perception and our connection to nature, to each other and to ourselves: Who are we? What remains hidden? What only becomes apparent at second glance?
Biography
Lars Rosenbohm (*1971 in Lemgo) lives and works in Bielefeld. His studio is located in the artists’ house Artists Unlimited. Rosenbohm’s works have been exhibited at the Museum Marta Herford, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, the Kunsthaus Essen, the Museum Schloss Moyland, the Saarland Museum, the Westfälischer Kunstverein, the Kunstvereine in Bielefeld, Oerlinghausen, Lippstadt, Ludwigshafen, Gütersloh and Lemgo, among others. Also in galleries and project spaces in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Biel/Bienne, Austin, Barcelona, Ghent, Kassel, Wuppertal and Osnabrück. Lars Rosenbohm’s works are represented in the collections of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, the Marta Herford and the Hanseatic City of Lünen. He has received grants from the Kunststiftung NRW, the Aldegrever Gesellschaft Münster, the Landesverband Westfalen-Lippe, the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft NRW and the Stiftung Kulturwerk, Bonn. In 2023, Rosenbohm was awarded the CityARTists Art Prize NRW as a representative of the city of Bielefeld. He has been nominated for other art prizes, such as the Belgian IKOB Art Prize and the Gütersloh Woldemar Winkler Art Foundation Prize.
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