Sascha Pohle’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses sculpture, video, photography, and performance, using objects and traces we leave behind to explore their influence and inscription on our material culture. He presents his serial works as typological collections of eclectic diversity that often evoke archaeological and anthropological associations. He combines material research into assemblages or juggles between media, for example by transferring photographs into woven bamboo sculptures or machine-made knitted fabrics or surface structures into glass objects.
Pohle also frequently draws on film and art history, interpreting and imitating familiar visual motifs and representations.
Pohle also frequently draws on film and art history, interpreting and imitating familiar visual motifs and representations.
Through his residencies and living places as an artist in different locations and the autobiographical influence against the background of the guest worker history in Germany in parts of his family, his artistic work has always been strongly influenced by themes such as mobility, identity, and belonging. This is reflected in how the boundaries between public and private, self and other, reality and fiction, memory and forgetting, are fluidly negotiated in his art. In this process, indexicality and contexts are shifted and transformed into new, unbound forms with openness to other narratives.
Occasionally, Pohle also blurs the lines between art and everyday objects that invite use but remain mere objects of contemplation. Amateurish coffee filter holders, glass that looks like gemstones, textiles that could be blankets, carpets, or scarves, flirt with fashion and applied art.
Occasionally, Pohle also blurs the lines between art and everyday objects that invite use but remain mere objects of contemplation. Amateurish coffee filter holders, glass that looks like gemstones, textiles that could be blankets, carpets, or scarves, flirt with fashion and applied art.
Sascha Pohle also initiates group exhibitions in collaboration with other artists such as Home Sequence and Workplace Sequence.
"My artistic practice is at the interface between sculpture, film and time-based media. The focus is on the exchange between these media and the interplay between object, filmic and performative staging. I am not only concerned with material transformations and transfer processes, but above all with the places and spaces in which I live and work. As in archaeology, I look for traces and remains of material culture that interest me as indexical traces of history and human movement. Found structures, patterns and fabrics, but also film and art historical references are transferred to other contexts and media, such as ceramics, glass, textiles or bamboo weaves, which in turn serve as objects in my films. Discourses on archives, the environment, technology, identity and migration are always present.
Examples of this are works such as Ornaments of Property and Liquid Grounds. In the former, discarded DVD and CD computer drives serve as building blocks for architectural ruins with ornaments, which can either be shown as sculptures in exhibitions or as 16mm films in which various structures were preserved. Liquid Grounds is based on impressions of the wooden floor of my former apartment, which were transferred into glass sculptures and continued to be used in the film, where they float like single-celled organisms or planets in front of a black background.
Another important work is the ongoing series Passage (since 2017), in which I transfer urban surfaces, photographs of asphalt from various cities in which I have lived and worked, into machine-knitted fabrics that are reminiscent of maps of imaginary cities and landscapes. In exhibitions, the fabrics act as movable elements of an open system, which are repeatedly arranged differently through folding, resulting in fluid images, shapes and spaces. Within the dialogue between personal archive, fabric, impression and sculptural gesture, the work also touches on questions of groundlessness and belonging. My own biography serves as a starting point for a micro-perspective reflection on the conditions of artistic existence in the present."
Examples of this are works such as Ornaments of Property and Liquid Grounds. In the former, discarded DVD and CD computer drives serve as building blocks for architectural ruins with ornaments, which can either be shown as sculptures in exhibitions or as 16mm films in which various structures were preserved. Liquid Grounds is based on impressions of the wooden floor of my former apartment, which were transferred into glass sculptures and continued to be used in the film, where they float like single-celled organisms or planets in front of a black background.
Another important work is the ongoing series Passage (since 2017), in which I transfer urban surfaces, photographs of asphalt from various cities in which I have lived and worked, into machine-knitted fabrics that are reminiscent of maps of imaginary cities and landscapes. In exhibitions, the fabrics act as movable elements of an open system, which are repeatedly arranged differently through folding, resulting in fluid images, shapes and spaces. Within the dialogue between personal archive, fabric, impression and sculptural gesture, the work also touches on questions of groundlessness and belonging. My own biography serves as a starting point for a micro-perspective reflection on the conditions of artistic existence in the present."
Sascha Pohle lives and works in Seoul and Düsseldorf.
His recent works were on display with solo shows including 'Fluid Ground', Alternative Arts Space LOOP, Seoul, KR,‚Passage’, Gregorzki Shows, Berlin, ‘Given Time, Black Sesame’, Institute for Provocation, Beijing, CN (2016); 2015 Home Sequence, Rongwrong, Amsterdam, NL; with group exhibitions such as WALK!, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, DE (2022), Festival Visiona Huesca, ES (2022), Macao Biennale ‚Advance and Retreat of Globalization, (2021), The 3rd Today’s Documents BRIC-á-brac The Jumble of Growth, Today Art Museum, Beijing, CN (2016), Plastic Myths, ACC Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, KR (2015/16), Globale: Global Control and Censorship, ZKM, Karlsruhe, DE (2015)
EDUCATION:
2002 Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule), Frankfurt am Main, DE,
2007 Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, NL
Since 2017, Assistant Professor for Fine Art Photography at College of Arts, Chung-Ang University, Korea
2012 Galerie Weingrüll, Karlsruhe, DE
2004 1822 Forum, Frankfurt am Main, DE
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023 Gao 稿 Politics of Painting, Kunstverein Hildesheim, DE
2021 Digital Signal, Eunam Museum, Gwangju, KR
2019 From Here to There, SeMa Storage, Seoul, KR
2018 Media Migration —The 2nd Diaoyu Fortress International New Media Art, Chongchin, CN
2018 Incounter, Hongcheon Bus Terminal, KR
2018 Glancing into the Sun, Hongcheon Museum, KR
2017 Friendly Patterns, Flo Maak/Sascha Pohle, Galerie Bernard Knaus, Frankfurt, DE
2016 History Code / Nanjing International Art Festival, CN
2015/16 Plastic Myths, ACC Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, KR
2015 National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA), Moscow, RU
2014 Galerie Weingrüll, Karlsruhe, DE
2013 New Kids of the Block, Tanas, Berlin, DE
2012 Generation Loss, Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila, PHL
2012 Signals: For Real, IFFR, 41st International Film Festival Rotterdam, NL
2011 Role Models - Role Playing, MdM Museum der Moderne Salzburg, AT
2010 ‚Convection’ Dafen International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Dafen Sub-Venue, Shenzhen Case Pavillion - 2010 Shanghai EXPO, Shenzhen, CN
2010 Taipeh International Art Center, Urban Nomad Video Art Section, TW
2010 Villains & Heroes, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, NL
2010 FELICITÀ, Kunsthaus Centre d'art Pasquart, Biel, CHE
2009 Videonale 12, Bonn, DE
2007 +Plus+, Vordemberge-Gidewart, Museum Wiesbaden und Nassauischer Kunstverein
2006 Ssamzie Space, Seoul, KR, '7th Open Studio'
22Wallstr., Frankfurt am Main, DE
2004 Zeithaus, Wolfsburg, DE
2004 realityreal, Galerie Gebrüder Lehmann, Dresden, DE,
2004 Situations construites, Espace d'arts contemporaines - Attitudes, Genève, CH
COLLECTIONS
ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medien
Frederic de Goldschmidt Collection
Eye - Filmmuseum
AWARDS
2012 Principal Price, 58th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, DE
2004 Vordemberge-Gildewart, CH
2003 Kulturstiftung Dresden der Dresdner Bank, ‚dynamo.eintracht‘, DE
FILMFESTIVALS:
2012/13 Rencontres Internationales Paris, Berlin
2012 BIEFF Bucharest International Experimetal Film Festival, RO 2012 58th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, DE
2011 Homeshop, Jue Festival Film Screning, Beijng, CN
2008 International Film Festival, 16th Curtas Vila do Conde, PT 2008 37th International Filmfestival Rotterdam, NL
RESIDENCIES
2016 Institut for Provocation, Beijing, CN
2015 ACC Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, KR
2013 Transfer Korea-NRW 2011 Incheon Art Platform, KR
2011/12 Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, KR
2009 Meet Factory, Prag, CZ
2005 Ssamzie Space, Seoul, KR
PUBLICATIONS (Selection)
WALK!, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2022
PAST REALIZATIONS Essays on Contemporary European Art, John C. Welchmann, Sternberg Press, 2016
TRANSFER KOREA - NRW, (Katalog der Ausstellungen im Kunstmuseum Bonn, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Museum Hagen, Alternative Space Loop, Arko Art Center / Arts Council Korea, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea). 2013
Van Gogh on Demand, China and the ReadymadE, Winnie Won Yin Wong, The University of Chicago Press, 2014
THE SWIMMER, Forum 1822, 2003
TEACHING
Since 2017 - Photography Department at School of Performing Arts and Media, College of Arts, ChungAng University, Seoul, South Korea