Reinhard Pods
Works 1976 – 2021

31 May – 24 July 2021

Reinhard Pods

*1951 Berlin – lives in Berlin

The paintings of Berlin-based artist Reinhard Pods are both abstract and figurative; layers of paint stagger in intense colors, scribbled lines smeared into streaks, enigmatic graffiti writings, and deformed bodies in large format open up new spaces. In terms of motifs, the works can be associated with the late abstract expressionism propagated by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, or Cy Twombly; the linguistic elements are reminiscent of Dadaism.

Learn More →

Selected Artworks

Reinhard Pods, Ohne Titel (will), 1981, Oil on canvas, 200 x 220.3 cm

Reinhard Pods
Ohne Titel (will)

1981
Oil on canvas
200 x 220.3 cm

Enquire →
Reinhard Pods, Ohne Titel (selbst), 2021, Ball pen, watercolor on canvas, 170 x 129.8 cm

Reinhard Pods
Ohne Titel (selbst)

2021
Ball pen, watercolor on canvas
170 x 129.8 cm

Enquire →
Reinhard Pods, Ohne Titel, 1983, Oil, spray on canvas, 140 x 110 cm

Reinhard Pods
Ohne Titel

1983
Oil, spray on canvas
140 x 110 cm

Enquire →
Reinhard Pods, Cordia (Cordia ist Soziologin, jetzt forscht sie in Wurzn), 1991, Oil on canvas, 220 x 200 cm

Reinhard Pods
Cordia (Cordia ist Soziologin, jetzt forscht sie in Wurzn)

1991
Oil on canvas
220 x 200 cm

Enquire →
Reinhard Pods, Ohne Titel, 1976, Oil on canvas, 169.8 x 250 cm

Reinhard Pods
Ohne Titel

1976
Oil on canvas
169.8 x 250 cm

Enquire →
Reinhard Pods, Ohne Titel, 2005, Oil on canvas, 230.6 x 164.8 cm

Reinhard Pods
Ohne Titel

2005
Oil on canvas
230.6 x 164.8 cm

Enquire →

Installation views

About the exhibition

Galerie Haas Zurich is pleased to announce the exhibition Works 1976 – 2021 by Reinhard Pods. The exhibition runs from May 31 to July 24, 2021. It is the first solo presentation of the German painter (*1951) at the Galerie Haas Zurich.

Reinhard Pods grew up in the bygone reality of West Berlin, in an exclave under the administration of three occupying powers. Far away from the artistic epicenters of Frankfurt, Cologne and Düsseldorf, he knew early on that he wanted to become an artist and enrolled at the Hochschule der Künste (now the Berlin University of the Arts [UdK]) at the age of twenty.

As a master student of Karl Horst Hödicke, Hödicke was initially Pods’ artistic compass, but after winning the DAAD scholarship in 1977, he moved to New York for a year, where he not only saw the works of American masters of Abstract Expressionism in person for the first time, but also immersed himself in Conceptual Art. As a result, Pods discarded his previous painting, which had been defined by representationalism, in order to, as Gianni Jetzer writes in the exhibition catalogue, “approach his work in a more gestural and intuitive manner. This went as far as a frenzied state, in which one layer of paint followed another, reworked wet-on-wet in rapid succession. Leaving behind the solipsistic claims of figurative painting, Pods established a contemporary connection to the energy of Jackson Pollock, only to sever it again in the next step. He lived out Hödicke’s As-Well-As by painting both abstractly and representationally and, additionally, by employing language as a purely Dadaistic element.”

The virtuoso As-Well-As runs like a red thread through Pod’s oeuvre and to this day the exploratory approach to painting determines his work. Pods has received numerous awards: in 1980 he won the Villa Romana Prize in Florence, in 1988 the Villa Massimo Prize in Rome, in 1994 the Will Grohmann and in 1996 the Fred Thieler Prize. Reinhard Pods now lives at Wannsee in Berlin.

The exhibition opens on Friday, May 28, 2021, from 5 to 8 pm. On the occasion of the exhibition a catalog will be published in German and English with a text by Gianni Jetzer.

The catalogue presentation will take place on 11 June, from 6 to 8 pm.

Catalogue

[click for an online preview]

Excerpt

“Reinhard Pods grew up in a bygone reality. Six years after the end of the Second World War, his life began in West Berlin, in an exclave under the administration of three occupying powers. The appealing resonance of that city’s name — recalling Marlene Dietrich and the grandeur of the 1920s — is deceptive, because the former capital was a divided territory cut off from the rest of the world. The major museums were almost all on the other side, in the Eastern Sector.”

Gianni Jetzer

Go to Top