For Art Rotterdam 2022 Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a duo exhibition by Marwan Bassiouni (CH, 1985) and Pieter Paul Pothoven (NL, 1981), which focuses on the exchange between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’.
Marwan Bassiouni visits mosques in The Netherlands in order to photograph the Dutch landscape from inside windows of Muslim places of worship. In his images you see interiors, combined with the actual view that can be seen from the mosque. The works show the diversity of Islam in apparent contrast to the equally diverse and at the same time unmistakably Dutch landscape. The series New Dutch Views (2018-2019) received international acclaim and one of the photos is included in the ‘Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography’ at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam.
In 2021 Bassiouni pursued his long-term photographic endeavor and traveled once more across polders, along industrial estates, to villages, inner cities and suburbs in search of additional New Dutch Views. Together with photographs he recently made in the UK and his native Switzerland, these images form the start of a Pan-European series New Western Views. A selection of these photos has been included in the this years Talent Issue of Foam Magazine and are also on show at Prospects & Concepts.
Pieter Paul Pothoven shows works from his series ‘Consignor Consignee’, made from lapis lazuli that he acquired in Kabul in 2009. The stones were shipped through Kamp Holland in Tarin Kowt, Uruzgan, to the 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 have worked with, to the grey-blue dust left behind in the mine shafts.
Like the stones, also the hardboard and tape from the transport crate and the polypropylene sacks in which the stones were carried within Afghanistan, were reworked into supports for the different pigments. By processing, repackaging and shipping lapis lazuli anew as a series of artworks, Pothoven underlines 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 colonial and capitalist contexts.
