Sascha Pohle's multidisciplinary practice encompasses sculpture, video, photography, and performative presentations. In his art, he evokes archaeological and anthropological associations, playfully referencing art and film history with adapted titles or other appropriations. He deals with an archaeology of surfaces—“fluid grounds”—where boundaries such as public and private, the self and the other, reality and fiction, memory and forgetting, and micro and macro become malleable.
Through his stays and life as an artist in different places as well as the autobiographical influence of parts of his family background in the guest worker history in Germany, his artistic work was always strongly influenced by themes such as mobility, identity and belonging.
His working material consists of the various inconspicuous traces we leave behind or those that inscribe themselves in us through the influence of our environment. Pohle's work is versatile both in media and content, with a penchant for collecting and accumulating. To this end, he uses found objects, everyday items, remnants, images, and video material from public spaces, archives, or his personal environment. He is interested not only in the presence in the absence of traces but also in the presence of the foreign for the formation of something own. The surface of apartment floors, urban asphalt, and other imprints—traces that have engraved themselves as history into social objects and places—are liberated from their indexicality and original contexts and transformed into fluid and unbound forms. In the artistic process of abstraction and media transfer they developed into something other, and this other becomes a self of soft structures - or hybrid containers - and leaves open what and who contains whom.
In many of his works, Pohle uses a visual language of topological overviews, as can be seen in his series of black-and-white videos and 16mm films, in his map-like approaches or his museum displays. Furthermore, he combines his finds to assemblages or transfers them to other media, such as photographs into woven bamboo sculptures or machine-knitted fabrics, and transfers surface structures from places or waste into glass objects.
He often blurs the boundaries between art and everyday objects that invite use but remain objects of contemplation. Amateurish coffee filter holders, glass that looks like gemstones, textiles that could be blankets, carpets, or scarves, also flirt with fashion and applied arts.
He also initiates group exhibitions in collaboration with other artists.
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)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
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
TEACHING
Since 2017 - Photography Department at School of Performing Arts and Media, College of Arts, ChungAng University, Seoul, South Korea