In 2013 Marjolein Rothman was invited to make a design for a new Dutch Euro coin. She studied portraits of King Willem-Alexander and developed a collage series. One of these collages was the starting point of a dark gray steel sculpture for the Amsterdam Council Chamber, showing the effigy of Willem-Alexander. It is deliberately left open in several places. “So the King is not the center of power, but part of the people. People can look through the king in council.”
On April the 24th, 2014 mayor Eberhard van der Laan revealed the sculpture and was also given a miniature to hand over to the King. And as we can see on the photograph, he really liked it, because he found a good place for it in his office.
– – –
Marjolein Rothman (Eibergen, the Netherlands, 1974) received her education at the AKI in Enschede (1994-1999) and was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2003 and 2004. She has been awarded the Dutch Royal Prize for Painting in 2004. She has exhibited in the Netherlands at: Nieuw Dakota Amsterdam, De Kunsthal, Rotterdam, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Stadsgalerij Heerlen, De Vishal Haarlem, De Nederlandsche Bank and Motive Gallery Amsterdam. Abroad, her works were presented at the Fiac Paris, ARCO Madrid, Art Cologne and Art Miami. In March 2009 Rothman had her first soloshow abroad, at Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm which was followed by a second solo exhibition at the gallery in May 2012. In December 2013, she showed her work in Antwerp at NK Gallery, together with Judit Hettema. Since 2011 Marjolein Rothman lectures Fine Art at the AKI in Enschede. She lives and works in Amsterdam.
In her work Marjolein Rothman seeks by way of painting to deconstruct specific cultural symbols. In 2003 she started to paint official monuments, historical figures and relics. The series ‘Iconography I’ (2006), consists of large-scale portraits of two 19th century French saints, Bernadette de Soubirous and Therese de Lisieux. Successively anonymous figures were portrayed in the same manner in ‘Iconography II’ (2007). In November 2008 Marjolein Rothman presented a new series called ‘Our Land’. ‘Our Land’ deals with the Dutch colonial past and was inspired by photographs taken by Dutch pioneers. Her new body of work entitled ‘Gaze’ questions specific aesthetic codes. Her work presents an on-going investigation of the act of looking or gazing. In all of these series Rothman creates material metaphors for the ambiguity that characterizes specific representations. Iconic images of the past reappear in her paintings fragmented, incomplete or as a mere shadow or projection.
