Sexshop De Barones
Max J.P. Postma, Archeologie Rotterdam
28. – 30.03.2025
Archeologie Rotterdam. Photo: Philip Graysc (left) and Maziar Afrassiabi (right).
Max J.P. Postma, The Annunciation, 2025. Photo: Philip Graysc
Sexshop De Barones. Photo: Philip Graysc
Max J.P. Postma, Untitled, 2024. All works. Photo: Philip Graysc
Max J.P. Postma, The Nativity, 2024. Photo: Philip Graysc
Archeologie Rotterdam. Photo: Philip Graysc
One of the fifteen exhibition sites during Het Zuid Manifest: I Love Carlos was Sexshop De Barones. The amazing owner of the sex shop shared her experience about the festival on De Barones’ website: “I met residents from Charlois—people I might never have spoken to otherwise.”
On view were paintings by Max J.P. Postma and nine archeological artifacts from the 15th and 16th century.
Postma’s paintings were brought to Rotterdam in collaboration with Brussel-based gallery Gauli Zitter. The works focus on the image of the egg.
The egg to me represents everything and nothing and everything in between. Egg as a world, where life unfolds as soon as it breaks. However, when the egg remains whole, all imaginable life is confined inside, like a chambered universe. Every possible decision and outcome, form and matter awaits inside the egg. On the exterior of the egg, nothing particular is revealed or even suggested by its odd perfect shape and moonlike surface. There are no extraordinary eggs, still inside every egg exists something exceptional. The egg is then a symbol for a kind of god, or whatever you'd like to call it. Everything and nothing.
— Max J.P. Postma
Sexshop De Barones hosted, next to the paintings by Max J.P. Postma, nine small figurines, mostly of Christian saints like Mary with child, Saint Catherine, and Saint Anthony. These were borrowed from the collection of Archaeology Rotterdam. The figures date from 1400 and 1550 and were found during archaeological excavations in Rotterdam’s city center. They were used in homes for prayer and sometimes carried as talismans. Though they now appear plain, they were once brightly painted and some still show traces of color.
Max J.P. Postma (b. 1995, Bergen-op-Zoom) is a painter based in Hamburg. His work treats painting as a metaphor for life—where subjects like a lamb on an altar, a landscape, or abstract forms become ways to reflect on the sacred and the everyday as one. He studied at ERG and Luca School of Arts in Brussels and earned his MFA at HFBK Hamburg under Jutta Koether. Postma has had solo exhibitions at Bbberlin (Berlin), Big Apple (Brussels), and diez (Amsterdam), and has shown work in Copenhagen, Vienna, and at MOM Art Space. He is also the founder of project space W.M.P. in Hamburg.
Archaeology Rotterdam was founded in 1960 as the Bureau Oudheidkundig Onderzoek Rotterdam (BOOR). It is the oldest municipal archaeological service in the Netherlands. Archaeology Rotterdam manages and researches the past: the archive beneath our feet. The results of archaeological research are shared with the people of Rotterdam and other interested audiences through lectures, school visits, publications, newsletters, and both permanent and temporary exhibitions.