Thanks for following the QR! around march 21 2023 here will be the english translation by Gerard Forde of the addendum - with the text written by Benno Tempel - to Ploeg + Werk, which will appear; DEEPL now thinks it will it will look like
Kunstmuseum Den Haag is proud to organize an exhibition on Maarten Ploeg (1958-2004). It is the first major survey of his oeuvre after his untimely death in 2004. From time to time, the Art Museum presents exhibitions of (inter)national artists who are somewhat removed from the canon, or at least no longer receive much attention in the Netherlands. Not infrequently, these are artists who made their appearance in the 1980s.
Ploeg’s oeuvre is still too little known – which is not the same as being recognized – even though his work has everything to be counted among the most important artists of his generation. In 1982, at the age of 24, Ploeg won the Koninklijke Subsidie voor Schilderkunst (now the Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst). After this, Ploeg was frequently in the spotlight. In 1984 his work was already shown in Kunstmuseum Den Haag (then Haags Gemeentemuseum Den Haag), which led to the museum also acquiring work. In 1985 he received the Prix de Rome Basic Painting Prize. Ploeg also created a furor with the pop bands Soviet Sex, Blue Murder and Astral Bodies. At the time of the first music videos, the clips of these bands stood out for their artistic quality. Like a Dutch David Byrne, Ploeg managed to combine art and music with a charming personality. Although many artists of the time were “into music,” it was actually mainly Ploeg who really worked long term on a musical oeuvre, including LPs, vi- deo clips and concerts.
Yet none of that has led to great visibility of the work today. In museums of modern art in the Netherlands, the work is largely conspicuous by its absence (be- half Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam has Park 4DTV’s video work. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam has owned a painting since 2020 that came into the collection thanks to a donation from Pieter and Marieke Sanders).
Exhibitions about artists from the 1980s are remarkably scarce in the Netherlands. And yet this decade was an exciting time, in which (painting) art gained new vitality and Dutch art also attracted international attention. Today only a handful of artists from this period are known to the general public. Unfortunately, a comprehensive art-historical study of this period is still lacking.
In this text, I will briefly discuss a number of characteristics of Maarten Ploeg’s work.
Ploeg. In this way, I hope to give an impetus to the study of the art of the eighties and the positioning of Ploeg ni those years.
THE 80s On the political, economic and social
The 80s were turbulent in political, economic and social terms. Large-scale unemployment, squatters’ riots and, its later, the yuppie and its materialistic scrap reflect the restlessness of the decade. This had repercussions on painting at the time. What can be said about this – in the Netherlands alone – is so extensive that it can only remain here for a global consideration.
After the abstract, minimal and conceptual art of the 1960s and the performance and video art of the 1970s, figurative painting emerged in the 1980s almost without warning. The reasons for this sentence have been described elsewhere.” Moreover, this is the last decen- nium before the current digital era ni the 1990s breaks through for good. It is a period of contradictions. Art i t the 1980s is both alternative and established, ironic and serious, idealistic and commercial, dirty and sterile.
Painting is largely figurative in those years. The decade begins with neo. expressive paintings, in which contrasting
Meanwhile you can buy the book for a limited time for a reduced price here
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