Jan van der Ploeg
Leiden (the Netherlands), 1959
Jan van der Ploeg (1959) likes to work with an organized and recognizable graphical visual language that he carefully constructed throughout his career. Since 1997 he works with a basic form that occurs in many of his paintings and that functions like an anchor amidst the endless potentiality of forms and shapes. This form, which he metaphorically titled grip, is a rectangle with rounded corners and has only in his recent paintings been slightly varied upon. Another recurring element is the use of patterns created through repetition of form. It is within these kinds of methodologies and restrictions that Van der Ploeg excels.
Van der Ploeg’s paintings are closest to his sketching process, which is the premises of all of his art works. A careful process of planning and constructing that takes place before painting even begins. Making a composition is like shuffling with flat building blocks of graphical forms and experimenting with an infinite palette of tints and colours. This is Van der Ploeg’s confined playground in which he finds the freedom to create well balanced combinations.
Jan van der Ploeg graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and Croydon College of Art in London and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In 1990 he was awarded the Royal Award for Modern Painting. He exhibited his work in both solo and group exhibitions in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Selected solo exhibitions in The Netherlands include: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam), SCHUNCK (Heerlen), MOTI Museum (Den Bosch) and the Gemeentemuseum (The Hague).
In 1999 Jan van der Ploeg founded the artist-run gallery, PS projectspace in Amsterdam.
