Galerie Michael Haas is showing paintings by Berlin artist Reinhard Pods (*1951).

Reinhard Pods who was born in Berlin in 1951 is part of the “Neue Wilde” (New Wild Ones) group together with Bernd Koberling, Luciano Castelli, Rainer Fetting and others. From 1971 to 1977 Pods studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and was a master student with Karl Horst Hödicke. Due to a scholarship he was able to spend the subsequent year in New York. In 1979 Pods, together with Frank Dornseif, Ter Hell, Elke Lixfeld, Rainer Mang and Gerd Rohling founded the group and self-help gallery 1/61, named after the postal zone of Kreuzberg. In contrast to the “Junge Wilde” 1/61 was more conceptually oriented.

The group organized a series of exhibitions from 1979 to 1980. During this time Pods was awarded the Villa Romana prize, due to which he received a work scholarship in Florence. In 1988 he received the Villa Massimo prize and returned to Italy. In 1986 he was honoured with the “Auszeichnung des Kunstfonds” in Bonn. Furthermore he received the Will Grohmann award (1994) and the Fred-Thieler award of the Berlinische Galerie (1996). Galerie Michael Haas previously exhibited Reinhard Pods in 1993. We are happy to now show an overview of his work.

Ever since the 80s Pods has stayed true to his aesthetic, characterized by a combination of the figurative and the non-representational. The figures dissolve in thick, dripping brushstrokes and splattered paint, becoming abstractions themselves, often juxtaposed with typography as well as photo- and objectassemblage. His ambiguous, eclectic paintings evoke diverse emotions and question the nature of good taste. Pods lives in Wannsee in Berlin.