For our fifth participation in Artissima Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present two series of works by Dutch artist Pieter Paul Pothoven.
Works from Pothoven’s series ‘Consignor Consignee’ are made from lapis lazuli he acquired in Kabul in 2009. The stones were shipped through ‘Camp Holland’ (the Dutch military base that was part of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan) located in Tarin Kowt, Uruzgan to a naval base in Amsterdam. By grinding and separating the lapis lazuli based on the density and specific mass of lazurite, the mineral that gives the rock its sought after colour, the resulting pigments represent varying intensities of the very same material—from the precious ultramarine the Old Masters used, to the grey-blue dust left behind in the mine shafts. Like the stones, Pothoven also reworked the hardboard, polypropylene bag and tape from the transport crate, in which the stones were transported, into supports for the different pigments. By processing, repackaging and shipping lapis lazuli anew as a series of artworks, the aim is to underline the post-aesthetic condition of the pigments. More than just an immaterial colour experience with a range of meanings – the color of peace, virtue, the sacred, the infinite and the void – the variegated ultramarine blue of Consignor Consignee is also a carrier of pressing contexts. The dust that miners have been breathing in for thousands of years; foreign intervention in the country where the stone is mined; the Amsterdam shipyard, now a naval base, where Dutch East India Company (VOC) ships were once built: all these frameworks testify to an asymmetric distribution of labour, power and wealth.
Pothoven’s work ‘ZAAK no. 2108/85’ is part of a six-year research project into the Revolutionary Anti-Racist Action (RARA). In the 1980s and 90s this anonymous collective fought against racism, oppression, and exploitation – the ongoing legacy of Dutch imperialist history. The targets of RARA included Shell and Makro, companies that were profiting from apartheid in South Africa. ZAAK no. 2108/85 consists of a series of 14 reproduced pages from the police file on RARA’s first arson of a Makro warehouse in the Amsterdam suburb of Duivendrecht, on September 17, 1985. The series incorporates recycled colonial artifacts that were used in the Dutch trade empire. The prints come in two sizes that are modeled after documents from 1651 and 1672 that embody the beginning of colonial bureaucracy in South Africa. The silver used in the printing process was extracted from coins minted by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the 18th century Dutch Republic, which circulated throughout its imperial trade network. The prints are framed in wood, sourced from shipping chests that once contained the private belongings and commodities of VOC officials. By destroying antiques of Dutch colonial history this work enables a new political framework from which to reconsider these cultural artifacts – typically misused to glorify the nation state’s histories of global domination – and to commemorate the resistance against the ongoing legacy of Dutch colonial violence.
Pieter Paul Pothoven (1981, NL) lives and works in Amsterdam. He received his BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and his MFA from Parsons The New School of Design, New York (US). He was a resident at Instituto Sacatar, Itaparica (BR), Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA (US) and the Jan van Eyck, Maastricht (NL). Recent exhibitions include A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Museum Het Nieuwe Domein, Sittard (NL); The Other Kabul, Kunstmuseum Thun (CH); The Weight of a Stone, blank projects, Cape Town (SA); The Body Keeps the Score, Kunstenlab, Deventer (NL); TK15223, Dürst Britt & Mayhew, The Hague (NL); In the Presence of Absence, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL).
Work by Pothoven is held in private and public collections, including the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden; Museum Het Nieuwe Domein, Sittard; Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam; Van Lanschot Art Collection, The Hague.
Currently a new videoinstallation by Pothoven is included in the group show Refresh #2 in the Amsterdam Museum. In 2024 Pothoven will have his first museum solo exhibition at Museum Het Nieuwe Domein In Sittard, The Netherlands.
