Upcoming Exhibition

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Dennis Scholl: Like a Thief in the Night

_{29 November 2025 - 28 February 2026}

PODIUM is proud to present ‘Like a Thief in the Night’, Berlin-based artist Dennis Scholl’s first solo exhibition in Asia and with the gallery. Known for his lush and phantasmagorical paintings and drawings, Scholl has been creating enigmatic worldviews where human and non-human beings oscillate between brutality and beauty, violence and tenderness. In this ambitious body of work, spanning 16 new paintings and a collection of drawings, the artist draws upon the pastoral as both a locus of sentimentality and a theatre of profound spiritual allegory. Centring on the recurring image of the shepherd—a guide of flocks—Scholl reimagines it as a sacred figure that commands cultivation and sacrifice across human and non-human life. Through his enchanting visual language and storytelling, Scholl invites the viewers to inhabit the crux of tension between comfort and foreboding, belonging and exile, nurture and disruption; reminding one that vigilance is not merely a stance of fear but also of attention and tenderness—that to live in anticipation of the unknown is to remain awake to care for oneself.

The exhibition opens on 29 November 2025 (Saturday) from 2 to 7 pm and is on view until 28 February 2026 (Saturday).

Artist
Dennis Scholl

PREVIEW REQUEST

The poetic and evocative exhibition title imbues a biblical undertone that is both uncannily intimate and unsettling. To arrive like a thief in the night is to arise suddenly, secretly, without warning—echoing the words of the New Testament that describe the hidden hour of Christ’s return and the coming of judgment. In Scholl’s solo presentation, this idiom is neither a moral threat nor a promise of catastrophe, but a call to dwell in the charged space of unknowing. The thief-Christ is paradoxical: feared for intrusion yet awaited as saviour, disruptive yet redemptive. In this vein, Scholl leads the viewers into a world that outwardly recalls the serenity of the pastoral but is consistently shadowed by the weight of revelation. The pastoral, often idealised as harmonious respite, is reconfigured as a vulnerable realm always on the brink of exposure—where every gentle image of care or communion is shadowed by the creeping awareness that the traumatic truth will make an unannounced arrival. Through archaic and enthralling imagery such as goats and lambs, shepherds and flocks, skulls and flames, Scholl summons the gravity of Christian symbolism while tempering it with gestures of tenderness. His shepherds are not distant icons but caring presences, holding the vulnerability of human and non-human bodies with quiet intensity. These gestures of care, however, do not neutralise the undercurrent of danger; rather, they exist alongside the knowledge that revelation arrives stealthily, when the soul least expects it.

Press Release Reqeust

Exhibition Preview
Detail of The Power of His Intonation (2025). Courtesy of the artist and PODIUM, Hong Kong.

Detail of The Fire that Called our Names (2025). Courtesy of the artist and PODIUM, Hong Kong.

Detail of A Shattering (2025). Courtesy of the artist and PODIUM, Hong Kong.

Works

Dennis Scholl
The Fire that Called our Names
2025
Oil on canvas
170 x 130 x 4 cm | 66.9 x 51.2 x 1.6 in