Visual Free Places: two tours through Niels Post

How do residents mark their own space in a city that is changing rapidly, and how long can these places last? Rotterdam artist Niels Post takes us to visual interventions and sanctuaries in Rotterdam, during a bike tour that starts with his work on the Erasmus Bridge.

Guided tours:
Friday, March 23
Friday 6 April
Time: 17: 00 hours
Starting point: new work Niels Post Erasmus Bridge
End point: Rotterdam's oldest café
Number of participants: Maximum 15
Reservations can be made by sending an email to j.sibum@cbkrotterdam.nl

He created his work on the Erasmus Bridge in 2017 (commissioned by the FRANK Foundation) as a follow-up to the letter box that he hung in 2006 at exactly the same place on the Erasmus Bridge and with which he claimed the bridge as his personal postal address. With On Spam, Lectori Salutem #6 he thanks for the many holiday greetings he received in that letterbox, and appropriates this location on the Erasmus Bridge. The place, which is normally used as a through road, now becomes a destination. On Spam, Lectori Salutem #6 was included in the art collection of Sculpture International Rotterdam (SIR) this spring. Other works of art in the SIR collection are Zadkine's The destroyed city, Joep van Lieshout's Cascade en It's Never Too Late to Say Sorry from Elmgreen & Dragset - information about all the artworks in this collection can be found at www.sculptureinternationalrotterdam.nl.

Posts Rotterdam tour leads from the bridge along the Binnenweg, including through the work of Daniel Buren on the Alliance Française, Jeroen Jongeleens sticker door and the stilt museum towards Delfshaven: from places where the city is occupied by its residents to the places where urban renewal has smoothed out. The end point of the route is the oldest café in Rotterdam.

Niels Post (1972, Hoogezand-Sappemeer) is a visual artist and active as a co-founder of Trendbeheer.com. He was educated at the AKI in Enschede and the San Francisco Art Institute. His work has been shown worldwide at video festivals, exhibitions and as a self-initiative in public space. Spam, computer generated text that nobody wants but that pops up everywhere, has been the basic material of his professional practice in recent years. Post uses it for interventions on vacant shop windows, wall sculptures and room-filling installations.