Renata Fabbri Arte Contemporanea is delighted to announce the exhibition THERE AND WHILE by Jan van der Ploeg until September 15, 2017.
“I’m always working on a good sense for the architecture in which the wall painting will be situated. I strive for different form of contrasts, sometimes regarding form, sometimes regarding color or rhythm… How do I choose colors? I think, it’s very intuitive, there are favored combinations, that appear more often, but I don’t work with strict rules, like e.g. Sol LeWitt, who worked with just primary and secondary colours etc. I’m more like an impressionist, I think. […]” (Jan van der Ploeg, 2013).
The artist, commonly known for his wall paintings, has always loved to “play” with the surrounding context, filling it up with colours shades and overwhelming it with geometric shapes. That is the so called “environmental painting”: monumental abstract silhouettes, made with acrylic colours and painted on the walls straight away. On the occasion of his solo show in Milan, Jan van der Ploeg will be introducing the wall painting No. 445, properly created for the gallery architecture and characterized by either vivid, fluorescent tones or faint, neutral ones. Jan van der Ploeg used to working with an organized and easily recognisable graphical visual language, a “trademark” that he has carefully developed throughout his career. Since 1997 he has introduced several recurring elements as the well known “GRIP”, a rounded corners rectangle representing the fil rouge of the majority of his pieces.
Together with his wall painting, he will show a recent series of paintings on canvas. These are much more smaller than the others and are characterized by their strong visual effect, almost optical and “lively”. With regards to his positive artistic approach, the artist states that art is a public gift that offers social and political motivations. His works are exhibited in various different locations such as Bocconi University, on the street or for instance in a restaurant. This shows how they can enhance not only international institutions but also ordinary venues. A selection of works on paper can be seen in the basement.
Simultaneously to THERE AND WHILE, Jan van der Ploeg will be realizing the wall painting No. 444 on the main wall of the restaurant ZAZÀ RAMEN, owned by Brendan Becht. It will be exhibited at Via Solferino, 48 until November 2017.
[vc_single_image image=”16130″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”] [vc_single_image image=”16129″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”]Jan van der Ploeg (1959, Netherlands) currently lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Croydon College of Art, London and De Rijksakademie in Amsterdam where he graduated in 1985. Van der Ploeg won the Royal Award for Modern Painting in the Netherlands. He exhibited his work extensively in both solo and group exhibitions all over the world: The Suburban, Chicago; Taubert Contemporary, Berlin, Germany; The Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sidney, Australia; Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand; Mercedes Benz Showroom Gallery, Germany; Zona Maco Mexico Arte Contemporanea, Mexico; Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Italy. His works can be seen in important public and private collections such as the Daimler Art Collection, Germany; the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Netherlands; Ministry of Internal Affairs and Finance in The Hague, Netherlands; Netherlands Embassy. Simultaneously to his artistic activity, Jan has founded and goes on running the PS, a highly-regarded exhibition space based in Amsterdam. Committed to new abstract and conceptual art, PS aims to provide a platform for the work of upcoming international artists in an environment that exists between the conventions of an artistrun space and a commercial gallery.
