Visual artist Peter Zuur: sieges in a bird's eye view

,,I put discomfort in my artworks. I get that feeling when I walk through the city and see all those big buildings. The postmodern architecture with its megalomaniac mentality, and its decay, those depress me."

From 29 November to 4 January, visual artist Peter Zuur is one of the exhibitors at the Pulchri Graphic Biennial, The Hague. Especially his works Siege 1 and 2 show a new direction on a road he has long walked.
Peter Zuur is convinced he is interpreting a feeling many people have. "I used to get sick of the overwhelming new buildings in cities, but drawing and painting made me see their beauty. Of course, I still have that I get lousy in cities, but a kind of emotional chord is struck in me now, which makes me look around me more sharply and see things I can use for my work. So discomfort has become a useful source of inspiration."

One example is a series of huge canvases showing interiors of factory halls, which look omposant but dilapidated. No people can be found in them. ''By leaving people out, I leave more to the viewer's imagination. There is no figure from which you can tell how big those halls are. That increases the alienation."

The paintings confront you with what humanity leaves behind. ''People themselves disappear, but what they made remains. Apart from books, for example, these are big buildings. As I paint them, I show that the builders have forgotten the human scale."

Peter Zuur does not recreate existing buildings from reality. He composes his images from photographs of different buildings. For example, he may place stairs from one building in another where there were originally no stairs. He then turns such a 'collage' into a negative as large as the canvas should eventually be. Thus he creates a photographic etching, which he prints and then starts editing. In this editing, he gets further and further away from the original image. It is a process of abstraction that culminates in his own signature: lots of grey and sparse use of colours.

Peter Zuur on his latest artworks:

The work Peter Zuur is showing in the Pulchri Graphic Biennial is not about paintings of interiors. Zuur steps outside and zooms out. The paintings that will be on show in Pulchri show ruins of cities or fortresses from a bird's eye view. ''Ruins are also an example of what people leave behind. I have been inspired by romantic paintings of sieges of cities. But I turn them into something new, something that can appeal to people today. The destruction you see is timeless. They have been taking place for thousands of years. And humanity has not gained anything from it. If I convey that, people might look at the conflicts that are happening now, in the Middle East for example, in a new way. Those are things I can get hellish about. The Western world does not really delve into what is going on there. The arrogant attitude of the West towards Islam: it destroys so much."

,,I once made a series of works with planes and airports. Air travel was originally exciting. It was fun to travel. But look at it now: airports have become a war-zone. Everything is unpleasant there. That has to do with those conflicts."

One of the works on display in Pulchri is a study for a painting of a dome. This does show people. ,,But these are more of a structure than a collection of individuals. It is a mass under a dome. In an essay by Marguerite Yourcenar on the architect Piranesi, I once read the thesis that architects who create large spaces are actually building on the inside of their skulls. That inspired me to make a dome series. In it, this megalomania of architects also comes to the fore. Take Albert Speer, the archtect of Nazi Germany. He also designed a dome, in Berlin, of immense dimensions. That thing was never built, but what he came up with was directly related to the skull he attributed to himself."

That Peter Zuur is able to exhibit at Pulchri, he greatly appreciates. ,,I use all kinds of unusual means for my artworks. You can't really call it graphics any more. That Maaike Schuitema and Marijke Verhoef of Pulchri dare to stick their necks out for this, I think is fantastic."