Jan van der Ploeg

van der Ploeg, Untitled, 2009.

The Platonic ideal of red saturates Dutch artist Jan van der Ploeg’s West 4th (2008), except for the white geometric motif that crosses the upper third of the silk-screen print. The abstract image comprises three rings and a solid circle that overlap rather than interlock; van der Ploeg prints only one ring in full, allowing the others’ edges to slide off the paper.

In the print, this motif leads viewers to imagine the shapes moving from side to side, and over and under each other. On the gallery’s white wall, van der Ploeg reproduces the rings and circle in brown paint and on a much larger scale as Wall Painting No. 260/West 4th (2009). There, they appear to expand horizontally as well as vertically, engaging the artist’s signature concern: the interaction between form, color and space. The edges of the truncated ring on the left burrow into the corner; the ring on the right seems to snake around the wall to the gallery office.

Van der Ploeg is in such thorough command of color and proportion that it’s a shame the other five pieces on display aren’t as dynamic. He gives these untitled acrylic paintings, completed in 2009, identical patterns of blunted triangles within rectangles, painting the shapes in two alternating colors (pictured). By showing us several variations on this composition, the artist encourages us to consider how his use of gray, purple, blue or orange affects our perceptions. In extending uneven bolts of color to the sides of some of the unframed canvases, he subverts the works’ otherwise precise symmetry. Still, the paintings’ (mostly) cool palettes and rigidly organized surfaces keep viewers at a distance.

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