Post Grounds – A collaboration by students of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) in the Art Collections of Ruhr University Bochum together with its Art History Institute.
Once traversed, it unfolds like a maze – a city within a city. It‘s a modern place of post-war architecture that, at its center, between concrete and art-in-architecture, houses the Art Collections of Ruhr University Bochum.

In the exhibition Post Grounds, students of the KHM enter into a dialogue with many of the works from these collections. Coming from the urban stage seminar, led by Prof. Mischa Kuball (Public Art), they bring their own artistic positions to the collections of the RUB, entering into a dialogue with its exhibits. The participants view the collections as a living, breathing space where past and future come together.

The exhibit grants insights to places that are easily overlooked and with performances, works in public spaces and interventions within the collections, tries to relate them to the rest of the campus. Thematically, the works range from thoughts on the physicality of bodies, to architectural violence and to questions of remembering. The Art Collections, places of art historical theory and museological praxis, are dynamically enhanced by the multifaceted views of the students.

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Post Grounds – Eine Kooperation von Studierenden der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM) in den Kunstsammlungender Ruhr-Universität Bochum mit ihrem Kunstgeschichtlichen Institut.

Betritt man den Campus der Ruhr-Universität Bochum wirkt er wie ein Labyrinth, eine Stadt in der Stadt, ein Ort moderner Nachkriegsarchitektur, in dessen Zentrum sich – zwischen Beton und Kunst am Bau – die Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität Bochum befinden.

In der Ausstellung Post Grounds bringen Studierende des Seminars urban stage unter der Leitung von Mischa Kuball (Public Art) ihre eigenen künstlerischen Positionen ins Campusmuseum ein und treten mit Exponaten der Kunstsammlungen in einen Dialog. Die Beteiligten verstehen die Sammlung als einen lebendigen Ort, an dem Vergangenheit und Zukunft aufeinandertreffen.

Die Ausstellung öffnet Blicke in Räume, die sonst leicht übersehen werden und tritt mit Performances, Arbeiten im öffentlichen Raum und Interventionen in den Sammlungen in Bezug zum Campus. Thematisch changieren die Arbeiten von Beschäftigung mit 
Körperlichkeit über architektonische Gewalt bis hin zu Fragen des Erinnerns. Die Kunstsammlungen, Ort der kunsthistorischen Lehre und musealen Praxis, werden in ihrer Funktion dynamisch um die vielfältigen Blickwinkel der Studierenden erweitert.
 
Dialogische Wege durch Post Grounds
Wie entsteht Kunst im Spannungsfeld von Architektur, Körper und Erinnerung?
Bei der dialogischen Führung durch die Ausstellung Post Grounds kommen Studierende der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM) und des Kunstgeschichtlichen Instituts der RUB miteinander – und mit euch – ins Gespräch.

Gemeinsam führen sie durch die Ausstellung und eröffnen Einblicke in künstlerische Arbeitsprozesse, Sammlungsinterventionen und kuratorische Entscheidungen.
Ein Rundgang von Studierenden für Studierende – offen, diskursiv und auf Augenhöhe.

📅 04. Februar 2026, 14 Uhr
📍 Kunstsammlungen der RUB / Campusmuseum


06.

SPECTRE HIDE

Niels Gössel
Installation of sculptures, polyurethane taxidermy base, plastisol, heat resistant glitter, fishing hooks and other paraphernalia, square tubing, fishing line
150 x 100 x 40 cm 
80 x 50 x 40 cm

2026























On a taxidermy foam base of a deer, replica antlers made with the materials and techniques of commercial fishing bait are mounted. They are cast from the hunting trophy of the deer that the artist‘s grandfather shot and killed. He was a serial pedophile rapist.

Fishing line hooks into them and spreads in a web of associations. 

Within a metal frame, interlocking patches of the same soft plastic are stretched like an animal hide being processed into leather. They are sewn together and show indentations reminiscent of those in surgical training kits.

The very specific shape of the patches is drawn from the mathematical disciple of tessellation: The spectre is a unique tile discovered in 2023 that can tile the plane only with itself (monotile) without ever creating a recognizable pattern (aperiodically). It repeats, but never in the same way.

The “hide” has been featured as costumes in the performance film TRAUMATOPHILIA (wt). 

The film imagines the workings of the cycle of transgenerational trauma, as each chapter uses a different mathematical shape to symbolize its conceptualization and rationalization, desperately trying to find a system of logic that can help make sense of what is ineffable.

Looking towards the laws of science in an attempt to resolve emotional turmoil, the installation is placed next to Richard Serra’s Right Angle Prop, exuding the legitimacy of the elementary principles of physics. The “hide”, too, is precariously under tension, the fishing line slowly cutting through the gelatinous plastic from all sides.



BIO


Niels Gössel (*1997, Münster) is a wood carver by trade and combines sculpture, film and performance in order to question (western) mechanisms of rationalization concerning trauma and social injustice. Each project seeps into the next in a continuous web of visual and conceptual associations, with queerness and psychoanalytic thought threading throughout. He lives and works in Cologne.



CONTACT

nielsgoessel.com
@nie.lope 
niels.goessel@gmail.com