Tour New Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart Untertürkheim
Jan van der Ploeg
Wall painting No. 167 (grip), 2006
Acrylic, 3.95 x 27.5 m
Mercedes-Benz Museum, restaurant
Collection Daimler AG
Since 1957, Jan van der Ploeg has used the ‹grip" as a recurrent module for his painting, a form derived from the handles of cardboard boxes intended for removals. In art-historical terms the motif and the modular painting refer to Minimal Art: to painted interventions by artists like Richard Artschwager in the 1960s, the so-called ›blps‹, and to Sol LeWitt's serially reduced murals. At the same time it is worth pointing out that combining image, wall, space and architecture in the medium of color and form was one of the ideas pursued systematically by the Dutch De Stijl movement in the 1920s.
Jan van der Ploeg varies the basic form of his murals according to the architectural conditions imposed. In this particular case, the wall flows round the curve of the space in an unusual way, and he also had to allow for the division into simple wall areas and the load-bearing concrete structure. The horizontal oval shape of the ›grip‹ invests the broken wall structure with sculptural density, and at the same time centres the viewer's attention. But then the large color fields take perception out beyond the borders of the image, and into the space.
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