Kunsthalle Bielefeld
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Shedding Light(s) –

A view into the Collection #11

A brightly lit screen stands under an open night sky. Its light makes a deserted area in front of it visible. Below the screen, the scaffolding is hidden by bushes. The sky is criss-crossed by white threads of light.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Union City Drive-In, Union City, 1993 This work is part of the series Theaters that includes more than 100 photos of American movie theaters and was taken between 1978 and 1995. Kunsthalle Bielefeld

Note: In this exhibition there are individual works with flickering or bright light. Find out more here.

Press material

Art A to Z

Media guide

How does light influence our perception of space and time? What artistic, philosophical and social meanings can it have? And how is our approach to light changing as a result of digital technologies?

Light makes things visible, creates atmosphere and shapes how we perceive spaces and forms. Its role in art has changed considerably over the centuries. Shedding Light(s) shows how artists use light as a creative force, as a symbol and as a visible theme.

Light appears in the collection presentation in different ways: as a medium, as a motif, as a metaphor.

As a medium, it becomes the material of art itself – in projections, reflections or luminous bodies, light becomes a spatial experience and is transformed into energy, movement and perception. As a metaphor, it stands for knowledge, spirituality or hope, but also for power and transience. Finally, light becomes the subject of depiction as a motif. In painting, photography and graphic art, artists explore how light can be captured, bouned or staged – between fleeting appearance and permanent form.

The collection presentation is presented in the context of the exhibition All light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today shown.

View into an exhibition room with dark grey walls. On the left, three square paintings with two square motifs, one resembling rays that seem to radiate in all directions from the bottom edge of the canvas; on the back wall, a painting with pale pink abstract figures with eyes; on the right wall, two paintings and 30 rather light-coloured prints or drawings arranged in a square. One painting here is more golden brown, the other shows a crowd of people in front of a bright sky.
Shedding Light(s) – A view into the Collection #11. Installation view. Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
View into an exhibition room. On the left, on a dark grey wall, a painting in a magnificent gold frame depicting a woman with an orange parasol under a clear sky with a few trees by the sea. In the centre of another wall, a square gold-coloured work; around the corner on the right, a work with geometric shapes in shades of green, blue and red.
Shedding Light(s) – A view into the Collection #11. Installation view. Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
View into an exhibition room. On the left, on a white wall, three golden square pictures. On the right, on a dark grey background, on two walls across the corner, three photograms in portrait format with a skull, then on the right wall, six black-and-white photos with the white screen of cinemas.
Shedding Light(s) – A view into the Collection #11. Installation view. Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
View of the corner of an exhibition room. On the left wall are three square pictures showing digitally-looking numbers painted in white on a gold background. On the right wall is a medieval picture on wood in landscape format depicting Jesus and the 12 apostles.
Shedding Light(s) – A view into the Collection #11. Installation view. Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer

KB Journal

Artist interview with Lars Rosenbohm

A slim man, about 50 years old, wearing a brown T-shirt and blue jeans, leaning against the frame of a room door. He is wearing horn-rimmed glasses with thin brown frames. In the background are stretcher frames and paintings wrapped in bubble wrap.

The Bielefeld artist Lars Rosenbohm explores the human condition in his haunting, sometimes disturbing depictions and reflects experiences of our time. Questions for the artist about his work from curator Felicitas von Richthofen.

A slim man, about 50 years old, wearing a brown T-shirt and blue jeans, leaning against the frame of a room door. He is wearing horn-rimmed glasses with thin brown frames. In the background are stretcher frames and paintings wrapped in bubble wrap.

Thomas Handke: What does the Kunsthalle Bielefeld sound like?
Cooperation with the HSBI 2022/23

Yana Wernicke: From quarry to art gallery – the red Main sandstone
Cooperation with the HSBI 2022/23

Rising red sandstone in the quarry with traces of cut stones.
Rising red sandstone in the quarry with traces of cut stones.

Vincent Hölscher: Engine room
Cooperation with the HSBI 2022/23

Galvanised pipework, partly at right angles.
Galvanised pipework, partly at right angles.

More from the archive

Black and white photo of a street. We are looking at a wall of houses with stores. Women are crossing the street beneath the large lettering. Two of them are completely covered in white fabric, apart from their eyes.

Gender – Domination – Visuality

Pierre Bourdieu's sociological view
Eliasson_Red window semicircle_querformat_2008_Alles Licht_112025_032025_Ausstellung

All light

Light and Space Yesterday and Today
In a workshop, perhaps a print shop, a woman with long dark hair stands behind a large tabletop. On it is a print with a misty look, as if made with spray paint. The woman is looking directly into the camera. She is wearing a dark blue, loose-fitting dress with a deep V-neck.

Closeness at a distance

Albrecht Fuchs: Portraits
A large, uneven, naturally grown piece of wood. However, only the two ends are made of wood. They are connected by 3D-printed plastic that picks up the wood structure and imitates it.

Edith Dekyndt. Tell us something that nobody knows
Two truncated orange-red circles. One at the top left, one at the bottom right. They almost touch each other in the upper third of the sheet. A white rectangle and several black rectangles of different widths are placed on the circles.

Context: Bauhaus

View into the collection #9
Like an abstract face made of black and white areas, with the black areas forming the eyes, beard and hair, and the white, lightly painted areas forming the skin and nose. Very abstract, perhaps it is not a face.

Lars Rosenbohm

There are possibilities so true and untrue
A bird

Play, Life, Illusion. Xanti Schawinsky + Monster Chetwynd “Xanti Shenanigans”

+ Monster Chetwynd. Xanti Shenanigans
Pauline Julier, Supernova © Pauline Julier

HYLE¹

Residence NRW⁺
60b5d1

Who we are

Face to Face and Side by Side #12
eulentraum key visual

Dreams of an Owl, Who the Bær and the Wounded Planet

Stories from the collection of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld and an intervention by Simon Fujiwara
A bundle of shapes. Shades of green and blue predominate in the background. On the left is the structure of a brick wall, on the right a shape reminiscent of a car. Streaks and drops seem to float in the foreground. They are predominantly blue and magenta.

Between pixel and pigment

Hybrid painting in post-digital times
The upright picture is completely filled with a blue and white grid of squares divided into triangles. The white lines are arranged in such a way that the central area of the picture appears to have been moved backwards, creating step-like shapes.

More than painting

View into the collection #8
A woman in a black dress on the right next to a thick tree in a garden. Red yarn is wrapped around the tree trunk, apparently unwound from a red dress. Only a small remnant of the red dress remains above the chest.

Haegue Yang | Martin Creed | Kanako Hayashi

Time and space. face to face and side by side #11
A woman has her head tilted to the left. She looks old and emaciated. She holds her chin with a bony hand. Her eyes are closed, her hair looks a bit untidy, it is probably pinned up at the back.

Taking a stand. Käthe Kollwitz, Mona Hatoum
Schwarz-weißes Bild eines mittelalten Mannes mit kurzgeschorenen dunkelgrauen Haaren, breiter Nase und dunklen Augenbrauen. Er blickt schräg nach unten und scheint in Gedanken versunken zu sein. Das Bild ist im unteren Bereich nicht zu Ende koloriert, es sieht unfertig aus.

Viewpoints

View into the collection #7
An empty room with a pink wall and dark tiled floor. A large white circle is drawn on it with chalk.

Paula Modersohn-Becker / Ian Wilson

Brush, line and assertion - face to face and side by side #10