Jan van der Ploeg
Jan van der Ploeg (b. 1959) studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and lives and works in The Netherlands. His work is both mischievous and pragmatic, adapting familiar forms such as the handle cut-out of moving boxes into abstract forms such as his well-known 'grip' motif. These motifs are repeated, inverted, and assembled into striking graphic patterns for paintings and large-scale wall paintings. Often utilising spaces of transitions – corridors, laneways, stairwells – van der Ploeg’s wall paintings dramatise sites of public and private space.
Jan van der Ploeg has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, at institutions including The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Daimler Chrysler Foundation (Berlin), Gemeentemuseum (The Hague), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Konsortium (Dusseldorf), PS 1 Contemporary Art Centre MoMA (New York), Centre d’Art Neuchatel (France), Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art (Brussels), and Dunedin Public Art Gallery (Dunedin).
Van der Ploeg is founding director of PS, a highly-regarded exhibition space and program 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 artist-run space and commercial gallery.