Please briefly introduce yourself and your artistic work.
I work with material, spatial, and cultural traces. Many of my projects emerge from constellations of objects and images that bring different layers of origin and meaning into relation with one another. Handmade, machine-produced, and found elements are brought together in installations that draw on practices of collecting, preserving, and arranging according to my own artistic systems. With references to film and art history, I work across media, including sculpture, video, photography, and performance, often in site-specific collaborations that incorporate local craft techniques.

Could you introduce some of your representative works and describe your working process? What are the central artistic approaches that shape your practice?
Many of my works begin with a found object, similar to an archaeological process. Often there is an incubation period before I understand how to translate the material into my artistic language and transform it into new contexts of meaning. An image might become a sculpture, an object might become a score, and a found item, such as a book, can serve as the starting point for an entire project that develops through series in which similarity and difference overlap. Media transfer, transformation, and movement between places and contexts are central principles in my work, which is shaped overall by processes of transition.

This is evident, for example, in my ongoing series Passage. It consists of a growing collection of machine-knitted fabrics based on cellphone photos of damaged, cracked asphalt from cities where I have lived and worked. Public ground surfaces are turned into fluid structures that oscillate between everyday object, archive, map, and memory. In exhibitions, performers fold, unfold, and arrange the fabrics in ever-changing combinations, creating a continuous movement between imagined and tactile spaces. Another multi-part work, After the Gift, explores the migration of seeds, techniques, knowledge, and people, as well as the idea of the “gift” as part of a network of relationships. The starting point was a book of historical macro photographs of plants by Karl Blossfeldt that I encountered during an artist residency in Beijing. In collaboration with a bamboo weaver in China, I translated selected motifs into three-dimensional objects. I was interested in how the architectural structures of these plants could be transferred into a traditional weaving technique, and how this process produces hybrid vessels that make both botanical forms and cultural transfers visible, connecting humans, objects, plants, and art. After the Gift also includes videos, an artist book, and a sound object. In I Packed My Bag, I work with the material layers of East German net bags that I collected, sturdy bags from factories that once also produced fishing nets. I cast them from the inside with clay to preserve their structure as a kind of fossil imprint. At the same time, I searched in Korea for washed-up Styrofoam fishing buoys, which are difficult to recycle. These carry traces of ropes whose structures visually correspond with the ceramic imprints, allowing me to use them as pedestals. The ceramics exist somewhere between container, sea creature, and fashion accessory. The title refers to the memory game “I packed my suitcase,” suggesting the many layers of origin, memory, and transfer that are condensed in the work. Themes such as identity, migration, and cultural belonging play an important role in many of your works. In what ways are the cities you live in or have lived in reflected in your work?
For many years, I have been moving between Germany and Korea, Düsseldorf and Seoul, as well as between different cultural and spatial frameworks—even though I spend most of my time in Seoul. These contexts influence my choice of materials, visual language, and themes. 

For example, in 2013 I created a slide projection titled Crippled Symmetry at the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, a city where I had lived ten years earlier. It featured ornamental floor patterns made from black storage boxes for 16mm films, which had been stored for years as analog remnants in the institute’s attic. The film material, once used for language teaching and cultural exchange, was reinterpreted as a visual archive, based on my memory of ornamental patterns from different cultures. Here, the material appears as a malleable structure of overlays and transformations. How did you come to move to Korea, and what led you to set up your studio at Namsan?
I first came to Korea in 2005 for a residency at Szamzie Art Space, one of the first artist residencies here. At the time, it was located in Hongdae, when the area was still strongly shaped by art and music. After those three months, I kept returning over the following years to stay connected with the people I had met, often as a stopover. Back then, I was traveling repeatedly to Shenzhen and Hong Kong for a video project.

In 2011–12, I did another residency at the Incheon Art Platform. During that time, I began commuting between Seoul and Amsterdam, which was my home at the time. In 2017, I accepted a professorship in photography at Chung-Ang University, which gave me a more long-term perspective and a visa.

To be honest, I ended up at Namsan more or less by chance, although I’ve since developed a strong connection to the area. I like the mix of people who live here, their stories, and the particular atmosphere of the mountain. We used to live in Kyungridan, and we plan to move back there in the future, so this part of town now feels like home to me.

What is your experience of working as a foreign artist in Korea? What challenges or differences do you encounter compared to your work in Germany, and what positive or enriching experiences have you had here? Has your visual language or thematic focus changed since living in Korea?
Working as a foreign artist in Korea feels like a mix of enrichment and challenge. The biggest obstacle is still the language. It is enough for everyday life and basic conversations, but in an artistic context, especially when it comes to research or specialized discussions, I quickly reach my limits. Many resources are harder for me to access, and networks can also be more difficult to enter.

Materials can sometimes be difficult to find, or only available with extra effort. Every step requires more energy, and many things depend on personal connections or mediation. This can lead to a certain level of hesitation. At the same time, it also opens up new ways of working. You focus more on what is possible and develop alternatives.

One example is my work with ceramics, which I began about three years ago. In Korea, high-fired ceramics dominate, whereas I currently prefer working with low-fired surfaces with matte glazes. Since suitable glazes and clay bodies are difficult to find here or need to be imported, I have been working more with colored slips or experimenting with terra sigillata, an ancient clay finish that is polished and can produce a silky surface even without glaze. These detours influence the visual language of my work, sometimes subtly, sometimes more fundamentally. When I am in Germany, I notice how my rhythm immediately changes. Things slow down, and at the same time, I have a different kind of access, as I can conduct research and explore production possibilities more independently.

Despite the challenges, I experience many enriching moments in Seoul, both artistically and in everyday life. This in-between state, both geographic and structural, cannot really be resolved and becomes part of my practice. Even though I have built a solid base here over the years, it remains important for me to stay present in both places.

Could you share a bit about how living in Korea has shaped or changed your work?
In the past, my work was more strongly structured by the logic of grant applications. Projects had to be proposed, funded, and justified, which creates a particular way of thinking. In Korea, the structural conditions are different for me, including in terms of funding opportunities. At the same time, having a relatively stable base through my professorship in Seoul allows me to plan more long term, work in a more process-driven and experimental way, and develop my projects more organically.

An important factor is that, for the first time in many years, I once again have my own studio. For a long time, I mostly worked from home or on a project basis in different locations, such as residencies. Having a dedicated workspace changes a lot. It creates continuity, focus, and a sense of arrival that directly affects my work. There are also specific thematic references that emerge from my life in Korea. At the same time, experiences of distance and proximity, as well as a simultaneous sense of connection and foreignness, influence the way I work, even if I cannot always clearly define how. It is difficult to separate cause and effect, since artistic development is rarely linear. Seoul itself has also changed significantly over the years. Like any environment, the city influences me, but not exclusively. Perhaps the geographic distance simply makes certain aspects more pronounced.

Are there particular places around Namsan that are especially meaningful to you, either because they are inspiring or because they help you unwind?
There are several places around Namsan that have become meaningful to me over the years, though it is less about individual favorite spots and more about the overall atmosphere and structure of the neighborhood. It is a mix of community, friends who live nearby, a certain calmness, a small park that I visit regularly to recharge, and a few cafés and places that I keep returning to. The proximity to the mountain, the view of Namsan Tower, and the surrounding paths feel both energizing and calming. It is a kind of everyday rhythm that naturally becomes part of my daily studio practice. Overall, Namsan feels like a place that sits between everyday life and artistic work. Which Korean or European artists inspire you? Are there individuals or traditions that have had a lasting influence on your artistic development?
When it comes to artistic influences, it is less about specific individuals and more about certain craft techniques, historical objects, or visual traditions that create an important field of resonance for my work. Right now, I am particularly interested in traditional Korean painting as well as folding screens—spatial structures that bridge the gap between painting and sculpture—which are currently being incorporated into a new work.

What fascinates me about folding screens is their movable character, but also the fact that they are functional, decorative, and symbolically charged at the same time. Many historical chaekgeori screens, for example, depict bookshelves filled with objects that signal status and lifestyle, a form of visual self-representation that suggests “you are what you read and what you own.” I am especially drawn to their graphic clarity and the interplay between space, surface, and object. I am also interested in the craft details, such as paper hinges that allow the panels to fold open smoothly on both sides.

What are you currently working on, and what projects are you planning for the near future?
At the moment, I am working on several projects that I am now continuing to develop or bringing to completion.

One focus is a body of work related to André Malraux’s Imaginary Museum (1952–1954), a trilogy of books that brings together decontextualized photographs of sculptures from different cultures and time periods for universal stylistic comparisons. Each volume serves as the starting point for a separate work in which I intervene in the canonical system of organization and propose an alternative.

In this context, I am currently working on a series inspired by traditional Korean painting, particularly Hwajeopdo (flowers and butterflies). Based on adapted images from Korean art books, finely detailed butterfly motifs are being painted in watercolor by an artist directly onto the pages of the volume Des bas-reliefs aux grottes sacrées. Another part of the trilogy, based on the volume Le Monde Chrétien, is the continuation of an earlier project that was paused for some time and is now entering its final phase: The Residue Atlas. It will take the form of an artist book based on photographed coffee stains, which are used for a kind of reversed, divinatory reading. Instead of interpreting the future, I relate these stains to visually similar scientific images from Earth observation programs, such as those by NASA or the European Space Agency, which document phenomena related to climate change. Another project developed in the immediate vicinity of my studio, in the now-restricted area of Bogwang-dong, a former neighborhood with an international population and rich religious and cultural diversity that had to give way to a large-scale urban redevelopment project. I combine remnants collected there, such as telephone cables, barrier chains, and blind cords, archaeological traces of everyday life, with ceramic objects to create assemblages. These function both as exhibition pieces and as fragile, ghost-like figures in a video set against a black background, where documentary and fictional layers overlap. They resist clear spatial and temporal classification, while still retaining a connection to the conditions in which they were originally created.

Project Planning and Interview: Leslie Klatte
Artist: Sascha Pohle
Images: Leslie Klatte, Yoonjung Daw
SNS-Shorts: Yoonjung Daw
Korean translation: Sohee Shin
English translation: Leslie Klatte