Veit Mette
Certainties
Matinees at the Kunstverein
01.03.–26.04.2026
Exhibition
Veit Mette
Certainties
With this exhibition, the Kunstverein presents new works by Bielefeld photographer Veit Mette (born 1961). His documentary images are snapshots that form a photographic biography of a city: Bielefeld. They reveal and artistically capture what would otherwise be lost in the flow of time. They show the people of this city who they were and who they have become. Whether in his large-format images in the central hall of the Bielefeld University, his photographs of people from Bethel who have been travelling through Bielefeld on a light rail train for a quarter of a century, or in Mette’s numerous other art projects, their presence in the city is always based on the desire to bring art into people’s everyday lives.
With the social upheavals – be they problems of advancing urbanisation, the ecological crisis or radical political upheavals – we have all lost our old certainties. Like a seismograph, Veit Mette’s art has changed and taken on the form of a search that oscillates between the no longer and the not yet unknown. With the help of multiple exposures, he sets image worlds in motion that artistically express the blurred and uncertain nature of this search. The boundary between photography, graphic representation and painting is deliberately crossed, representing an attempt to make the search for new certainties a general, shared endeavour.
17.05.–12.07.2026
Exhibition
Bruno Raetsch
Friends
Bruno Raetsch, born in Neuss in 1962 and raised in Potsdam, is a professor of sculpture/figure at Burg Giebichenstein, the Art University in Halle (Saale), and head of the class of the same name. He represents an art movement that confidently abandons the traditional concept of sculpture, in which a craftsman “carves an image out of stone or wood” Bruno Raetsch is completely independent artistically, free from conventions and capable of giving plastic form to moods, feelings, thoughts and memories – in three-dimensional drawings of possibly real and imaginable soulscapes, surrealistic and often socially critical wooden sculptures, through expansive three-dimensional installations and through sculptures made of clay, concrete and other materials, from which he also casts bronze sculptures. “There is an incredibly concentrated raw energy in his paintings and sculptures – like oak trees in a headwind,” writes London-based Swiss artist Hans Stofe about Bruno Raetsch’s art: “This energy spreads across the surfaces to the edges of the objects or images, where it solidifies into encrusted, dark, shadow-like figures. The paintings become sculptural, the sculptures become painterly” – and the art seems alive.
31.05.2026, 11.30 am
Talk
Prof. Claudia Rohrmoser
Art, Digital Media and AI
Prof. Claudia Rohrmoser, born in Salzburg in 1977, teaches Motion Design and Media Scenography at the Faculty of Art and Design at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSBI). In 2019, she founded the Digital Media and Experiment programme, which has since established itself as a pioneering creative flagship for HSBI. In addition to her teaching activities, she works as a media artist in theatre, concert and institutional contexts of electronic art. Her works move in the borderline and interstitial space between film, music and stage. In a critical examination of the different temporalities of human perception and ecological transformation processes, she develops spatial image productions that make moving images tangible as expanded cinema, audiovisual concert performances or location-based projection mapping. Her works have been shown internationally, including at the Mutek Festival Tokyo, Stanford University, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, the Salzburg Easter Festival, Ars Electronica and Theater Bielefeld. She studied multimedia art with a degree in computer animation at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg, media art with Prof. Maria Vedder and narrative film with Prof. Jutta Brückner at the Berlin University of the Arts. She is currently conducting research on the spatial and physical effects of immersive media art as part of a PhD programme in artistic research at the Mozarteum University Salzburg.
01.03.–26.04.2026
Exhibition
Veit Mette
Certainties
With this exhibition, the Kunstverein presents new works by Bielefeld photographer Veit Mette (born 1961). His documentary images are snapshots that form a photographic biography of a city: Bielefeld. They reveal and artistically capture what would otherwise be lost in the flow of time. They show the people of this city who they were and who they have become. Whether in his large-format images in the central hall of the Bielefeld University, his photographs of people from Bethel who have been travelling through Bielefeld on a light rail train for a quarter of a century, or in Mette’s numerous other art projects, their presence in the city is always based on the desire to bring art into people’s everyday lives.
With the social upheavals – be they problems of advancing urbanisation, the ecological crisis or radical political upheavals – we have all lost our old certainties. Like a seismograph, Veit Mette’s art has changed and taken on the form of a search that oscillates between the no longer and the not yet unknown. With the help of multiple exposures, he sets image worlds in motion that artistically express the blurred and uncertain nature of this search. The boundary between photography, graphic representation and painting is deliberately crossed, representing an attempt to make the search for new certainties a general, shared endeavour.
17.05.–12.07.2026
Exhibition
Bruno Raetsch
Friends
Bruno Raetsch, born in Neuss in 1962 and raised in Potsdam, is a professor of sculpture/figure at Burg Giebichenstein, the Art University in Halle (Saale), and head of the class of the same name. He represents an art movement that confidently abandons the traditional concept of sculpture, in which a craftsman “carves an image out of stone or wood” Bruno Raetsch is completely independent artistically, free from conventions and capable of giving plastic form to moods, feelings, thoughts and memories – in three-dimensional drawings of possibly real and imaginable soulscapes, surrealistic and often socially critical wooden sculptures, through expansive three-dimensional installations and through sculptures made of clay, concrete and other materials, from which he also casts bronze sculptures. “There is an incredibly concentrated raw energy in his paintings and sculptures – like oak trees in a headwind,” writes London-based Swiss artist Hans Stofe about Bruno Raetsch’s art: “This energy spreads across the surfaces to the edges of the objects or images, where it solidifies into encrusted, dark, shadow-like figures. The paintings become sculptural, the sculptures become painterly” – and the art seems alive.
31.05.2026, 11.30 am
Talk
Prof. Claudia Rohrmoser
Art, Digital Media and AI
Prof. Claudia Rohrmoser, born in Salzburg in 1977, teaches Motion Design and Media Scenography at the Faculty of Art and Design at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSBI). In 2019, she founded the Digital Media and Experiment programme, which has since established itself as a pioneering creative flagship for HSBI. In addition to her teaching activities, she works as a media artist in theatre, concert and institutional contexts of electronic art. Her works move in the borderline and interstitial space between film, music and stage. In a critical examination of the different temporalities of human perception and ecological transformation processes, she develops spatial image productions that make moving images tangible as expanded cinema, audiovisual concert performances or location-based projection mapping. Her works have been shown internationally, including at the Mutek Festival Tokyo, Stanford University, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, the Salzburg Easter Festival, Ars Electronica and Theater Bielefeld. She studied multimedia art with a degree in computer animation at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg, media art with Prof. Maria Vedder and narrative film with Prof. Jutta Brückner at the Berlin University of the Arts. She is currently conducting research on the spatial and physical effects of immersive media art as part of a PhD programme in artistic research at the Mozarteum University Salzburg.
The History of the Synagogue in Oerlinghausen
On his own website, Jürgen Hartmann draws on numerous historical sources to provide a compelling account of the latest findings on the history of the synagogue in Oerlinghausen — from 1894 to the present day.
