Louis Pohl Koseda: Christie's Award Exhibition 2025
The Dawn of the Golden Age:
An exhibition of works by Louis Pohl Koseda
10 – 14 February 2025 at Christie's London
This February, the Royal Drawing School presents The Dawn of the Golden Age, a solo exhibition by Alumnus and Christie's Award winner Louis Pohl Koseda.
Through a series of intricate works, Pohl explores London’s multifaceted social landscape —housing estates, homeless shelters, financial institutions, and creative spaces — rendered as a sequence of drawings.
Each work juxtaposes the intangible, spiritual, and mythological with the visceral, often brutal realities of human life. Drawing on his East London upbringing and ancient Hindu and Christian texts, Pohl delves into ethical challenges, societal paradigms, and volatile, comedic moments. His fine-line drawings bring to life imagined figures and scenes, culminating in a striking “Last Judgement” image where reality and the ineffable converge.
With sharp social commentary, autobiographical reflections, and vivid storytelling, the exhibition presents a turbulent yet interconnected portrait of modern London.
“In this series, I’m using a fictional opera as a framework to show our complex society. But in a sense, this opera is real. Through the prism of the imagination, we get closer to truth. The pieces are drawn in a live dialogue with the world around us. By revealing how social systems are constructed, we invite the viewer to co-create them. Drawing is both action and research. It helps us understand something only because and only when we communicate something to ourselves - it’s a self-reciprocating dynamic.”
Exhibition open to view:
10 – 14 February at Christie's London
Monday 9am–5pm
Tuesday 10am–8pm
Wednesday 9am–5pm
Thursday 9am–5pm
Friday 9am–1pm
Image: Detail from 'Capital at risk: drawing the City of London', Louis Pohl Koseda, pen on paper, 2.5m x 1.4m, 2024
If you would like to hear more about the Drawing Year, visit our postgraduate pages or to keep updated on when Drawing Year applications open or other exhibitions, sign up to the Royal Drawing School Newsletter.