Jan van der Ploeg - b. 1959 - Van der Ploeg likes to work with an organized and recognizable graphical visual language that he has carefully constructed throughout his career. Since 1997 he works with a basic form that occurs in many of his paintings and functions like an anchor amidst the endless potentiality of forms and shapes. This form that 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 this kind of methodologies and restrictions that Van der Ploeg excels; in limitation does the master reveal himself. Van der Ploeg paintings are closest to his sketching proces which is the premises of all 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 colors. This is Van der Ploeg’s confined playground wherein he finds the utter freedom and pleasure to create forever more surprising but very well balanced combinations.

Jan van der Ploeg graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam and Croydon College of Art in London and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.
In 1990 Jan van der Ploeg has been awarded the Royal Award for Modern Painting.

He exhibited his work extensively in both solo and group exhibitions in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Selected exhibitions include: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MOMA PS1, New York, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; Kunstverein Heilbronn, Heilbronn; Von Bartha, Basel; Minus Space, New York; Sikkema Jenkins, New York; Wellington City Art Gallery, Wellington; Starkwhite, Auckland; Sumer, Tauranga; Taubert Contemporary, Berlin; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Cleveland; Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney; Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington; Dunedin Public Art Gallery; Daimler Art Collection, Stuttgart; Ludwig Forum für Internationale kunst, Aachen; Kunst-Station, Wolfsburg; Museum of Concrete Art, Ingolstadt; Kunstmuseum der Stadt Ulm, Ulm; Mies van der Rohe Haus, Berlin; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; the Kunstmuseum in The Hague and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

In 1999 Jan van der Ploeg founded the artist-run gallery, PS projectspace in Amsterdam.