A Collision of Street Art, Pop and Expressionism
For his debut exhibition in Asia, German artist Reinhard Pods brings the grit and high-voltage energy of the 70s and 80s underground scene to Fergus McCaffrey Tokyo’s newly expanded Aoyama space. Pods’ story reads like a rock-and-roll odyssey: after studying in West Berlin, he landed in a New York loft in 1977, spending his nights at legendary clubs like CBGB’s watching the Ramones and Talking Heads. Returning to Berlin, he settled right into the heart of the Kreuzberg punk scene. This “urban expressionism” is baked into his canvases — a raw, cacophonous collision of street art, pop and abstract expressionism.
After working in relative anonymity for decades, Pods’ recent work shows the kind of self-assurance that only comes from years of flying under the radar. His paintings are intentionally rough and unpolished, ditching clean conceptualism for a mix of oil paint, watercolor and even spray paint. This exhibition features 15 works spanning from 1979 to 2025, offering a rare look at an artist who influenced a generation — alongside names like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Martin Kippenberger — but chose to stay out of the spotlight.
