Jan van der Ploeg: BIG CALM, 2010
Installation with wall painting & acrylic on linen paintings
Dimensions variable

September 18 – October 16, 2010
Opening: Saturday, September 18, 2010, 3-6pm

A solo exhibition by Amsterdam-based artist Jan van der Ploeg.

MINUS SPACE
98 4th Street, Buzzer #28
Brooklyn, NY 11231
> directions

Julian Dashper in New Caledonia, July 2008

August 7 – September 4, 2010

MINUS SPACE is honored to announce the memorial exhibition Julian Dashper (1960-2009): It Is Life. The exhibition marks the one-year anniversary of the New Zealand artist’s death and it will feature a single work by Julian entitled Future Call, as well as written tributes to him by more than 70 artists internationally.

Julian Dashper is one of the most significant reductive artists of his generation. He was one of MINUS SPACE’s earliest international collaborators and supporters, starting around the time of our inception in 2003. Julian has had a core presence in our project ever since. Renowned for his generosity to others, he was highly esteemed both as an artist and individual, and is dearly missed by his family, friends, and the community of artists. As evident in the written tributes to him by artists to be included in the exhibition, Julian’s practice extended well beyond the walls of his studio. He was a “husband, father, friend, partner, collaborator, teacher, mentor, and advocate”. His life and work directly impacted hundreds of artists and others around the globe. His influence and legacy will continue for many years to come.

For Julian Dashper (1960-2009): It Is Life, MINUS SPACE will present Julian’s work Future Call consisting of a single telephone installed in the gallery that is periodically called from New Zealand, which is 16 hours ahead of New York City, only to be left ringing and unanswered. Traditionally completed by Julian, Future Call will be performed throughout the exhibition by Julian’s wife, artist Marie Shannon.

In addition, more than 70 artists and other individuals from around the globe contributed texts to the exhibition, including personal notes, memories, anecdotes, criticism, correspondence, poems, and elegies:

Soledad Arias, Marcus Bering, Channa Boon, Ralf Brög, Henry Brown & Millicent Borges Accardi, Mary-Louise Browne, Vicente Butron, Melanie Crader & Mick Johnson, Christoph Dahlhausen, Kasarian Dane, Judy Darragh & Rosanna Albertini, Christopher Dean, Matthew Deleget & Rossana Martinez, Ali Duffey, Daniel Feingold, Linda Francis, Alicia Frankovich, Zipora Fried, Andrea Gaskin, Daniel Göttin & Gerda Maise, Michelle Grabner, Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery, Vaughan Gunson, Jenny Halliday, Lynne Harlow, Miriam Harris, Gilbert Hsiao, William Hsu, Simon Ingram, Kyle Jenkins, Ian Jervis, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, James Juszczyk, Steve Karlik, Mark Kirby, WJM Kok, Keira Kotler, Elodie Lesourd, Stephen Little, Joshua Lux, MariaMaria, Jackie Meier, Moreno Miorelli, Dane Mitchell, Victoria Munro, Geoff Newton, John Nixon, Rose Nolan, Salvatore Panatteri, Carrie Patterson, Nathan Pohio, Gwynneth Porter, Mel Prest, Linda Roche, Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Erik Saxon, Karen Schifano, Marie Shannon, Sandra Smith, Barbara Strathdee, Clary Stolte, Robert Swain, David Thomas, Mandy Thomsett-Taylor, Tilman, Jan van der Ploeg, Machiel van Soest, Erica van Zon, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Isha Welsh, Marcus Williams, Emi Winter, Rachael Wren, Patricia Zarate, and others.

Fittingly, Julian Dashper was born on February 29, 1960 (leap year day). During his career, he mounted more than 140 solo exhibitions of his work worldwide, including in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Europe, and the United States. In 2001, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to be an artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. A 25-year retrospective of Julian’s work, entitled Midwestern Unlike You and Me, curated by Christopher Cook and David Raskin, traveled the United States during 2005-2006, making stops at the Sioux City Art Center, IA; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, NE; and Ulrich Museum of Art, KS. Julian’s work was included in our comprehensive group exhibition MINUS SPACE at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in NYC in 2008-2009. Julian died on July 30, 2009, and is survived by his wife Marie Shannon and their teenage son Leo.

SUPPORT
We would like to thank artists Marie Shannon, Victoria Munro, and Jan van der Ploeg for their tremendous assistance in organizing this exhibition. We would also like to thank all of the artists who contributed heartfelt texts to the show. MINUS SPACE’s programming is made possible by the generous support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individual donors. We thank you!

PRESS
Summer Group Shows, by Robert Shuster, Village Voice, August 25, 2010
Julian Dashper: It Is Life at MINUS SPACE, by Tana Mitchell, PROCESS Blog, August 18, 2010
Julian Dashper (1960-2009): It Is Life at MINUS SPACE, James Kalm Report, August 8, 2010
A Must-See, Artlog, August 7, 2010
Artlog’s Top Art & Culture Picks, Huffington Post, August 4, 2010
Be Prepared to Go With the Flow, by Adam Gifford, New Zealand Herald, July 31, 2010

MINUS SPACE
98 4th Street, Buzzer #28
Brooklyn, NY 11231
> directions

Installation view with works by (l-r)
Jan Maarten Voskuil, Evi Vingerling, Marius Lut,
Geeske Bijker, Tonneke Sengers

June 12 – August 7, 2010

Participating Artists: Steven Aalders, Linda Arts, Geeke Bijker, Rene van den bos, Jasper van der Graaf, Jose Heerkens, Arjan Janssen, Ditty Ketting, Klaas Kloosterboer, WJM Kok, Marius Lut, Jan van der Ploeg, Tonneke Sengers, Evi Vingerling, Jan Maarten Voskuil

Jan van der Ploeg, Wall Painting #279, 2010
Installation view

April 16 – May 1, 2010

Installation view

April 10 – May 6, 2010

Jan van der Ploeg, Wall Painting No. 277
Untitled (Dignity), 2010
Acrylic on wall
714 x 2304 cm

A regular visitor to this part of the world, it is more than a decade since Jan van der Ploeg’s paintings have appeared at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. As a component of the Open Hang exhibition (1997), van der Ploeg was invited to select an artwork from this Gallery’s collection to go alongside a series of his small abstract paintings. He chose the iconic koru painting Pipitea (1982) by Gordon Walters who he greatly admired, and which is coincidently currently on display in Beloved.

As part of a new generation of artist’s who emerged in Modernism’s wake, van der Ploeg has become an important exponent and advocate for rethinking both the language and ways that formal abstraction can be applied in contemporary painting. Untitled (Dignity) is an example of van der Ploeg’s ability to revitalise this form of practice, firstly by making it an immersive and overwhelming experience, but also by heightening its relationship with the particular architectural nuances and temporal qualities of this space.

Designed especially for this site Untitled (Dignity) is atypical of this artist’s Wall Painting practice, with its emphasis on a sharply delineated vertical axis that playfully articulates the gentle slope of the Big Wall. However, the mesmerizing, rippling, expanding and contracting qualities of Untitled (Dignity) is more representative of van der Ploeg’s other works, which tend to be memorable for their explosive colour combinations, stark graphic qualities and looping, folding and mirroring patterns.

-Aaron Kreisler

Work by Claus H Jensen

March 7 – April 30, 2010

Brad Killam & Michelle Grabner, Inside Trip, 2009
Silverpoint, wood, metal, enamel

February 27 – April 10, 2010

White Flag Projects presents Newtonland: Orbits, Ellipses and other Planes of Activity, with artwork by Greg Bogin, Elizabeth Bryant, Anne Eastman, Ib Geertsen, Grabner/Killam, Jean Painleve, Jan Van Der Ploeg and Jonas Wood. The exhibition is curated by Michelle Grabner.

Newtonland: Orbits, Ellipses and other Planes of Activity will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue published by Poor Farm Press titled MOBILES, including essays by Nicholas Frank, Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam.

Daniel Göttin, Transformer 2, 2008

After 2step, minimalpop, Painted Objects, Double Exposure, A Bit O’ White, My Eyes Keep Me In Trouble, Yo, Mo’ Modernism, With Your Eyes Only, COMPOSITE VISIONS is the ninth touring group exhibition organized by CCNOA, Brussels, Belgium.

Since its last theoretical stance as a sublime yet powerful art form, creating a new -ism and ironically also stating the end not only of painting but possibly also of visual art in general, and of its intellectual process, the idea of the ‘reductive’ itself has made an impressive return. Traces of the idea of the ‘reductive’ and similar approaches to art-making can be found in many artistic oeuvres which have come into the limelight since the overpowering postmodern related statements by artists and critics in the late 80’s, and the aesthetics of the ‘reductive’, nonobjective and concrete are now a subject of reflection in contemporary art practices, re-emerging from an imposed quasi non-existence.

In this state of relative non-recognition within the discourse and debate around art and culture in general, the subject of the ‘reductive’ as a possible antithesis to the overpowering reintroduction of representational painting and at the same time to the emergence of the focus on new media, technology and photography, has regained considerable strength over the last decade within an international frame of cultural production and commerce, as well as through the firmly held lone positions of artists like Mosset, Charlton, Armleder, Morellet, Palermo and others throughout the 80’s and 90’s.

Having seemingly recovered from the harsh critical overtones after almost being eliminated from contemporary discourse, in which a retroactive and purely commercial tone took over, the ideas and strategies of the ‘reductive’ and ‘essential’ have slowly found their way back into artistic language and practice. Yet, due to the visual superimpositions of present times, artists have started to shy away from the rigid limitations of -isms related to the ‘non-objective’ or ‘reductive’ and have embedded existing ideas, confluence of styles and approaches into the contemporary world, the here and now, mingling with popular culture as well as branching out of the studio practice inherent in painting as we know it and as the majority still likes to understand it.

Crossovers with other forms of art, like pop art, installation, and new media, play a major role in this new understanding of art-making in the realm of the ‘reductive’ and in its breaking out of its claimed territory with excursions into new planes of understanding, confronting the remarkable stakes which are on offer within the perimeter of ‘reductive’ art production today.

COMPOSITE VISIONS is triggered by the multitude of influences entering the thinking, thought process and practices of an array of like-minded contemporary artists from around the globe working within the fascinating and resilient discourse surrounding the historical, formal and contemporary explorations within the field of the ‘reductive’ in general and ‘reductive’ painting in particular.

Organized by the Brussels-based CCNOA COMPOSITE VISIONS comprises the work of 16 international artists and aims to give a modest inside overview of the possibilities within this broad approach. This type of exhibition is never able to display the entire palette of diversity; CCNOA’s objective is simply to document some of the thinking around this subject.

Participating Artists:
Kjell Bjorgeengen, Julian Dashper, Delphine Deguislage, Edith Dekyndt, Daniel Gottin, Clemens Hollerer, Camila Oliveira-Fairclough, Ingrid Maria Sinibaldi, Michael Skoda, Tilman, Alan Uglow, Jan van der Ploeg, Dan Walsh, Lars Wolter, Carrie Yamaoka, Beat Zoderer

Jan van der Ploeg, Wall Painting No.273 Grip, 2009
Acrylic on wall, 560 x 1400 cm

November 7 – December 19, 2009

JAN VAN DER PLOEG
“And yet Giotto succeeded. He could make the local and particular stand for universal ideas.”
– Roger Fry, Vision and Design (1920)

“The purpose of good design is to ornament existence, not to substitute it.”
– George Nelson, Good Design: What is it for? Problems of Design (1957)

“Q: Ought [art and design] tend toward the ephemeral or toward permanence?
A: Those needs and designs that have a more universal quality will tend toward permanence.”
– Charles Eames, “What is Design?” (1972)

American artist Joe Scanlan wrote a critical essay in 2001 titled, Please, Eat the Daisies. In it he examines the faulty premise of ‘design art,’ a term that came into favor in the mid 1990s’ as a way to categorize the work of artists such as Jorge Pardo, Atelier van Lieshout, Tobias Rehberger, Andrea Zittel among many others. He describes it by stating that, “design art could be defined loosely as any artwork that attempts to play with the place, function, and style of art by commingling it with architecture, furniture and graphic design.” Importantly he goes on to say that, “what seems critical to design art in all of its forms is that some sort of slippage occur between where art is, how it looks, and what it does.” The premise of this essay however is not Scanlan’s astute ability to detail the characteristics of this new genre but his insights into exposing its failures. His fundamental argument is that its practitioners evoke double standards by employing notions of design and function as a foil for artmaking. “We harbour a philosophical disappointment in the professional double standard practiced by design artists themselves, whose need for art to appear useful—without the risk of being so—strikes us as timid and sad.”

I appreciate Scanlan’s articulate assertion that design art regularly fails because its claim to design, and all of its many social and serviceable facets, is only a ruse for making art. This is where Jan van der Ploeg comes in. His wall paintings conjured from the visual properties prevalent in graphic design aspire to be first and foremost art. Van der Ploeg is a skilled designer and exquisite draftsman who navigates between innovation and familiarity, mischievousness and pragmatism. As a problem solver Van der Ploeg assesses a given site, public or private, and with a refined abstract vocabulary he dramatizes architecture and place. Organizing information and assigning it active meaning is a role shared by both the artist and the designer. Yet distinct from the graphic arts, van der Ploeg conveys, like Giotto before him, a desire to communicate abstractions and ideals that lay beyond function kindling the extra-ordinary and the unexpected.

With color, repetition and scale, van der Ploeg eschews static functional design dialogue, opting instead for lively visual attention. One needs to approach his wall paintings with the same curiosity that one would approach a Sol LeWitt wall drawing or an Ellsworth Kelly shaped painting. Despite their graphic and generous scale, close and intense observation is required to understand the visual patterns and motifs comprising their composition. As Philip Fisher writes in Wonder, the Rainbow and the Rare Experience, “To profit from wonder man cannot be either inattentive or passive, since in these cases he would not notice differences, nor can he feel himself to be living in a world that is fragmented, anarchic, and unpredictable.” Van der Ploeg works here, in the margin that separates the familiar from the wondrous, between abstract and the concrete

This is perhaps most evident in the ambiguous and idiosyncratic public spaces van der Ploeg occupies: the stairwell, the corridor, the oblique street-side wall of a house. These are spaces of transition, ephemeral spaces, overlaid with a design that, through a self-contained symmetry, or a repetition suspended by the space itself, attests to its own permanence, its own structurality. As Friederike Nymphius writes, van der Ploeg’s wall paintings, “draw in” the incidental marks of utility, the purely “architectural factors like doors and windows, chimneys and frames,” negating their particularity and making them complicit in the monochrome abstraction.

This is something quite different from, perhaps opposed to, what Scanlan identifies as the specious “double standard” of a merely apparent usefulness. Rather, van der Ploeg invokes the “slippage” between “where art is, how it looks, and what it does” in an effort to effectively de-functionalize the public space where the art is, to efface its transience with a mark of the permanent. In other words, the drama van der Ploeg creates through his appropriation of public space is not the drama of design, or, as George Nelson would put it, the ornamentation of existence, but its utter reconfiguration.

In the context of the gallery, the space of intentional viewing, van der Ploeg’s paintings evince a dissimilar effect. With the same dedication to form, the same repetitious vocabulary, the work unmasks the limitations of the viewing-space. Here the wall paintings solely evoke their concreteness. Their reality is conveyed in the line, color and surface of the works. Where, in public sites, the abstraction assimilates social and political particularities, in the gallery the wall paintings formally negotiate the prosthetics of the space itself: the parquet flooring, the light fixtures, etc. Brilliant, dizzying, harmonizing, van der Ploeg’s paintings on expanses of gallery walls protract van Doesburg’s claim that “a plane is a plane, a line is a line, nothing less, nothing more.” However, his paintings expand the best of contemporary non-objective work in their shear boldness and fearless scope, the entirety of the painting’s dynamics are always greater than the architecture that supports them.

The impact of van der Ploeg’s paintings is located at the intersection of sensation and thought, between the work’s graphic visual impact and its conceptual underpinnings. His paintings are welcomingly antagonistic to narrative. Signifying instead a powerful commitment to the commingling of the familiar, new and strange potentials of color and form. When viewing van der Ploeg’s work “We find our way not to a moment of solving the painting, but to knowing it…being acquainted with it, seeing part of the intelligibility of it as Aristotle, Theodoric, Descartes, or Newton saw part of the intelligibility of the rainbow,” (Fisher, p. 179)

–Michelle Grabner

Daniel Göttin, Vakuum, 2009
Adhesive textile tape, transparent tape, aluminium tape
Installation view

November 15, 2009 – February 28, 2009

Featuring 50 artists from 8 countries.

Participating Artists:
Nir Alon, Nathan Baker, Carola Bark, Nicholas Bodde, Ingo Bracke, Lars Breuer, Silke Brosskamp, Laura Bruce, Christoph Dahlhausen, Bruno Dorn, Reinhard Doubrawa, Martin Durham, Karsten Fodinger, Manuel Franke, Marcel Frey, Sebastian Freytag, Tom Früchtl, Daniel Göttin, Wiebke Grösch und Frank Metzger, Yvo Hartmann, Geka Heinke, Graham Hudson, Gary Jolley, Laresa Kosloff, Andreas Lorenschat, Antonia Low, Tumi Magnusson, Guido Münch, Aki Nakazawa, Esther Neumann, Frank Piasta, Jan van der Ploeg, Trevor Richards, Kai Richter, Karen Scheper, Rita Rohlfing, Christine Rühmann and Sjaak Beemsterboer, Christiane Schlosser, Arne Schreiber, Nicola Schudy, Daniel Schürer, Paul Schwer, Cony Theis, David Thomas, Tony Trehy, Jan Verbeek, Cornel Wachter, Achim Zeman

Work by Remco Torenbosch

September 20 – November 22, 2009

A group show about light, organized by the Groninger Museum, Wall House #2 and Kunstruimte09.

Venues:
Academie Minerva Zuiderdiep, Kunstruimte09, Wall House #2, Academie Minerva Praediniussingel & NS Hoofdstation Groningen

Participating Artists:
Spencer Finch, Laura White, Julian Daspher, Erwin Wurm, Remco Torenbosch, Jan van der Ploeg, Willum Geerts, Twan Janssen, Ton Mars, Tomas Rajlich, Aart Rudolphy, Jan Scheerhoorn, Roland Schimmel, Jochem van der Spek, Rom Gaastra

From 20 September to 1 November 2009 many parts of Groningen will be devoted to the art manifestation entitled Chromodomo. A route touching on exceptional and colourful places in the city also leads visitors to a series of extremely varied exhibitions and activities in the Wall House #2, Kunstruimte 09, and Minerva Academy of Art at the Zuiderdiep and Praediniussingel locations and at the Central Railway Station Groningen

Artists displaying a special relationship with the phenomena of colour, light and space have been invited by Kunstruimte 09 (K09) and the Wall House #2 Foundation to develop new work for Chromodomo. Each participating artist creates his or her own environment in an individual space.

K09’s selection consists of a number of artists who incorporate new multimedia in their work, as well as artists who make use of more traditional resources. These groups include artists who explore to the utmost, in spectacular work, the possibilities of their visual resources, and also artists who approach these resources from a more reductionist slant.

Work of the following artst is shown in K09 , the Acadamy of Arts Minerva ( location Zuiderdiep and location Praediniussingel ) and the Central Railway Station in Groningen: Julian Daspher, Rom Gaastra, Twan Janssen, Ton Mars, Jan van der Ploeg/ Willum Geerts, Tomas Rajlich Aart Rudolphy, Roland Schimmel, Jochem van der Spek, Remco Torenbosch

The Wall House is a house, a dwelling place for two people and certainly no ‘white cube’, no modernistic exhibition space. The house refers to the things that are normally done in a dwelling place – eating, sleeping, going to the toilet, etc.

It is exactly these references that nourish the newly developed work by Laura White from London and Erwin Wurm from Austria. Spencer Finch is primarily engaged in the examining the landscape as seen from the Wall House. This was also the point of departure for John Q. Hejduk (architect of the Wall House).

In the Chromodomo Trialogue, a number of presentations and discussions will deal with the way in which colour, light and space play a role in our experience of architecture and art. The afternoon will conclude with an exceptional colour buffet.

The Colourful City (in Dutch: Kleurrijke Stad) walking route comprises 24 examples of existing objects in public space in Groningen in which colour and light are conspicuously present.

Finally, Joost Swarte (cartoonist/designer) has designed a colouring picture of the Wall House especially for Chromodomo.

Installation view with works by Tilman, John Nixon &
Julian Dashper (left to right)

August 23 – September 27, 2009

HICA, The Highland Institute for Contemporary Art, is to host an exhibition of artists’ work from PS gallery, Amsterdam, opening on Sunday 23rd August, 2009.

Concrete Now! Introducing PS will present work from artists who have exhibited with PS, including Julian Dashper, Michelle Grabner, Gerold Miller, John Nixon, Jan van der Ploeg, and Tilman. A truly international show, bringing together artists from Europe, USA, Australia and New Zealand it will also stand as the second of a series of annual group exhibitions held by the HICA art-space which seek each year to extend the discussion around the space and its concerns with ideas of ’concrete’ as opposed to ‘abstract’ artworks.

Based in Melbourne, Australia, John Nixon is one on the country’s leading minimalist practitioners with works in collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. “The materiality of my work is part of the materiality of experience. I work from the premise that the work of art exists in a ‘real’, physical, rather than illusory world.” – John Nixon, from Thesis: Selected Works from 1968-1993, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 1994

Julian Dashper was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1960. As well as being held in all the major public collections in New Zealand his work can also be found at MCA in Sydney, the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He has recently been the subject of a major touring retrospective in America.

Tilman lives and works in Brussels and New York. As well as his own international art practice he is Artistic Director and Chief Curator of CCNOA, Centre for Contemporary Non-Objective Art, Brussels.

Michelle Grabner is a Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at The Art Institute of Chicago, and co-founder of The Suburban, an artist project space in Illinois. “Painting is not Painting when it props up the self or attempts to tell stories. That activity is called picture making. Painting is larger than pictures but not larger than its limitations which are severe and singular and sweet.” – Michelle Grabner

Gerold Miller lives and works in Berlin. He has held solo exhibitions in London, Paris, Vienna, Brisbane, Berlin, Zürich, Salzburg and Japan. “Miller’s wall floor, and room objects in public and private space are space-scape pictures in the best sense, because they dare to grasp for the whole – of the world, of space, of the truth, and of the chaos, ramified like rhizomes – that we call life.” Stephan Maier in: ’Gerold Miller, Reforming the Future’, Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg 2001.

Jan van der Ploeg is co-founder of PS gallery in Amsterdam. His “grip” paintings first showed up on the streets of Amsterdam in 1996 and he has worked extensively and internationally with galleries such as Florence Lynch New York, Raid Projects Los Angeles, the Stedelijk Amsterdam, CCSC Barcelona and South London Gallery.

Both HICA and PS are artist-run galleries with a concern for developing international dialogue while also facilitating local discussion. While the exhibition space of PS is situated in a canal house in the centre of Amsterdam, HICA occupies what might in contrast seem a remote space in the Highlands of Scotland. Concrete Now! Introducing PS will be an opportunity to demonstrate a shared positive approach to exhibiting contemporary artworks, where the presenting of works and considering of ideas becomes a moment for examining existing understandings and a testing-ground; suggesting and offering new possibilities.

Work by Jan van der Ploeg

June 20 – August 1, 2009
Opening: June 20, 2009, 2pm

Curated by Victoria Munro, participating artists include Andrew Barber, Julian Dashper, Matthew Deleget, Daniel Gottin, Kyle Jenkins, Lucy McMillan, Dane Mitcehll, Jan van der Ploeg & Tilman.

‘We Go Far….And Way Back.’, is a group painting show comprised of artists with shared work philosophies and exhibition histories. ‘We Go Far…., refers to not only the distances geographically between the artists but also the integral nature of travel in their practice. …..’And Way Back.’ – each of the nine artists here including the show curator have directed/founded and exhibited in variations of the ‘artist run space’. They have ‘bed hopped’ between countries and each other’s galleries, creating a constantly shifting informal collective.

Andrew Barber is a practicing artist, based in Auckland, New Zealand, with a record of involvement in artist-run spaces – formerly as director of Room103 from 2004 – 2007 and currently as a founding member of Gambia Castle, a new art space in Auckland run by a collective of artists and writers. In 2007 He was invited to join the Starkwhite stable of artists.

Julian Dashper was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1960. He has been exhibiting regularly throughout New Zealand since 1980, Australia and Europe since 1992 and across America since 2001. In 2001 Dashper was based as an artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas (www.chinati.org) funded by a senior Fulbright fellowship. Dashper’s work from the last 25 years has recently been the subject of a major touring retrospective in America, curated by Christopher Cook and David Raskin.

Matthew Deleget (Brooklyn, USA) is an abstract painter, curator, and writer. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and Australia. He is a member of American Abstract Artists and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation’s Artist Advisory Committee. Matthew has received awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Brooklyn Arts Council, and The Golden Rule Foundation, and his work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Artnet Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Basler Zeitung, among others. He is the director of Minus Space in Brooklyn, NY.

Daniel Göttin lives & works in Basel (Switzerland) Göttin’s works are site-related installations and all-over drawings made of industrial materials. The real space with its own qualities has a strong influence on his artistic concept and practice; it becomes an integral part of the installation. Artwork and real space appear as transformed entities, both exist simultaneously in time and size. Each new spatial situation provides a new experience of perception. The creative manipulation of simple functional material can translate the act of looking into the art of seeing, transforming the place itself into an experience of perception. Göttin’s practice includes wall drawings and spatial interventions. He is the founder of Hebel, an artist-run exhibition space in Basel (CH).

Kyle Jenkins lives and works in Toowoomba, Australia, where he is the coordinator of Visual Arts at the University of Southern Queensland. Through the spatial expectations of architecture as well as traditional developments of abstraction his work fluctuates within and between the act of habitation and the creation of imagined space which produces work positioned within canvas and wall paintings (soft and hard edge geometry), architectural models, drawings, photographs, films and objects. He is currently i.e. gallery, director, Toowoomba, Australia and was also a board member of Sydney Non-Objective (S.N.O) from 2004 – 2007

Lucy McMillan is a New Zealand visual artist who currently lives and works in Berlin. She is the current recipient of a Culturia artist residency in Berlin. She is the co-editor of art publication SOAP.

Dane Mitchell lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand. Mitchell is currently living in Berlin completing a one-year residency in the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme. He is the first New Zealand artist to be awarded a place in this internationally renowned program since it’s beginning in 1968. He joins a line up of DAAD artists that includes: Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Douglas Gordon, Dan Graham, Damien Hirst, Ilya Kabakov, On Kawara, Nam June Paik, Bridget Riley, Pippilotti Rist, Lawrence Weiner and Rachel Whiteread.

Jan van der Ploeg lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He exhibits internationally, often completing large-scale wallpaintings as well as works on canvas. Van der Ploeg’s wallpaintings exist of different layers of paint, as a result of which a soft and smooth texture arises, comparable to his paintings on canvas. He has developed his own color-vocabulary, existing of black, white and contrasting tones as pink, purple and orange. He is also the artistic director of PS gallery in Amsterdam (NL) 1999-2009.

Tilman is a Visual Artist who lives and works in Brussels (B) and New York NY (USA). As well as his own international art practice he is artistic director & chief curator of CCNOA center for contemporary non-objective art Brussels (BE) since 2003, and Co-founder and artistic director of H29 Brussels (B) 2005 – 2008.

Victoria Munro was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1975. She has spent the last thirteen years working between Auckland, New Zealand and New York. During this time she has exhibited her own photographic and sculptural work internationally and curated/co-curated exhibitions in New Zealand, Australia and Europe. Munro was co-director of rm3 and rm212 gallery from 1998-2002. She is the co-editor of art publication SOAP.

VIEWLIST is MINUS SPACE’s new online project space where we invite artists and others to curate a visual essay of images. VIEWLIST exhibitions are experimental and usually thematic, and can include art works spanning various time periods, movements, and geographic locations. Exhibitions may also include ideas and images from disciplines outside of the visual arts. With VIEWLIST, we’ve created a venue that focuses exclusively on ideas, a kind of idealized curatorial space, where exhibition budgets, loans and acquisitions of art works, timelines, and all other logistics are set aside.

Our second viewlist exhibition is conceived by Chicago-based artist Michelle Grabner. Michelle is a Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1997, she co-founded, along with her artist and partner Brad Killam, The Suburban, an artist project space in Oak Park, Illinois. She is also a regular contributor to X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly. Her work is represented by Rocket Gallery, London; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Green Gallery, Milwaukee; and Gallery 16, San Francisco.

There are many things in the air and all of them are for free
Conceived by Michelle Grabner

“So I think what comes next is a web with big holes blown in it. A spiderweb in a storm. The turtles get knocked out from under it, the platform sinks through the cloud. A lot of the inherent contradictions of the web get revealed, the contradictions in the oxymorons smash into each other.” — Bruce Sterling, February 2009

Fiscal exigencies have bestowed artists with promising new freedoms. No longer charged with the aim to develop tamped spoils for the voracious speculative collector, many artists are once again examining the formal dimensions of three-dimensional space.

In photography this can be seen in the renewed and enthusiastic interest in abstraction. The exploration of the darkroom’s technical limitations and its structural truths are once again concretizing photography.

The superabundance of ceramics and cast-metal objects weighing on gallery pedestals of the recent years has given way to boundlessness. Untying gravity and provoking physical space is being ushered back into the formalist’s syntax as traditional measures of object value have broken down.

Unlike the contemporary accretion work that engages in synthetic concepts of space, the works included here actively invent spatial relations, experiment with organizing structures and choreographing movement. Accumulation and collection practices — many of which were aptly featured in the New Museum’s “Unmonumental” exhibition — are acts of imitation, a superfluous and redundant practice mirroring web navigation and digital information gathering: web 2.0 assemblage.

“There are many things in the air and all of them are for free” is the title of a loopy wire sculpture by Diango Hernández that is currenty on display at the Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach. I have adapted this title for my purposes as it locates value while poetically summoning the progressive fact that three-dimensional space is new again.

Look up.

Installation view

May 16 – July 4, 2009

Gallery Sonja Roesch presents an exhibition featuring work by Dutch artist Jan van der Ploeg. The exhibition will open May 16 and close on July 4, 2009.

Jan van der Ploeg is interested in the relationship between art and the public sphere. He constructs site-specific wall painting installations, both indoors and outdoors, that react with the surrounding architecture and atmosphere. The paintings represent a series of abstract forms that are repeated throughout his work, like the “Grip” and the “Wave”. The “grip” is a horizontal, long rectangle with rounded corners, derived from the hand-holes in the cardboard boxes used for removals. Attracted to repetition, his work relates painting, sculpture, system, and seriality.

The scale of these wall-size, and even building-size, installations consider not only the architectural surroundings but also the viewer’s participation. The designs are painted with an un-textured surface using black, white and other contrasting color shades. Depth of field is created through size and placement. His attention to scale is very important, especially in relationship to his paintings on canvas. Though physically smaller, they have a large presence due to the sense that their design could extend beyond the edges of the canvas.

Jan van der Ploeg, born 1959 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, has exhibited his work extensively throughout Europe as well as the United States. He is also the co-founder of PS Projects, an artist-run exhibition space in Amsterdam.

Installation view

May 3 – June 30, 2009

Andratx, Heerlen, Amsterdam

Participating artists:
Tim Ayres, Ab van Hanegem, Jan van der Ploeg, Han Schuil

Installation view
Photo: Matthew Septimus

Closes Monday, May 4, 2009

The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary.

We greatly thank curator Phong Bui and the remarkable staff at P.S.1, the participating artists and their galleries, and our generous donors, whose financial support made this exhibition possible.

Exhibiting Artists
Soledad Arias, Shinsuke Aso, Sharon Brant, Vicente Butron, Bibi Calderaro, Melanie Crader, Matthew Deleget, Lynne Eastaway, Gabriele Evertz, Zipora Fried, Daniel Göttin, Julio Grinblatt, Billy Gruner, Terry Haggerty, Inverted Topology, Steve Karlik, Sarah Keighery, Andrew Leslie, Daniel Levine, Juan Matos Capote, Salvatore Panatteri, Karen Schifano, Jan van der Ploeg, Don Voisine & Douglas Witmer

PLEASE NOTE: Our exhibition in P.S.1’s Boiler Room space closed on January 26, 2009.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 6-8pm

Wine bar and hors d’oeuvres

Gary Snyder Project Space
250 West 26th Street
4th floor, between 7th & 8th Ave.
New York, NY 10001

for inquiries please call 646 325 4581

Tickets
$25 NOS Donor
$50 NOS Patron
$100 NOS Benefactor, includes
or more acknowledgment in 2009 catalogue

Raffle
Win a DAN WALSH work
Tickets: 1 for $30, 2 for $50, 5 for $100
All other works for sale $500 and under

Artists:
Andisheh Avini, Tanya Barr, John Beech, Marina Berio, Richard Bottwin, Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, Eric Brown, Angela Cumberbirch, Mark Dagley, Christoph Dahlhausen, Stephen Dean, Matthew Deleget, Anne Deleporte, Gabriele Evertz, Manuela Filiaci, Kevin Finklea, Linda Francis, Douglas Gordon, Daniel Göttin, Nora Griffin, Gilbert Hsiao, Andrew Huston, Steve Karlik, Tania Kitchell, Karl Klingbiel, Lluis Lleo, Rossana Martinez, Norman Mooney, Matt Mullican, Scott Ogden, Salvatore Panatteri, Jan van der Ploeg, Andreas Reiter Raabe, Judy Rifka, Gary Rough, Jackie Saccoccio, Karen Schifano, Kate Shepherd, Motoe Shiratori, Jason Silva, Melissa Staiger, Tilman, Li-Trincere, Ian Tyson, Don Voisine, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Dan Walsh, Rob Wynne, Michael Zahn & Harry Zernicke

* List in formation

Special thanks to Susan Madden, John Melick and Gary Snyder for their assistance.

If you are unable to attend and would like to make a fully tax deductible contribution,
please make check payable to Non-Objectif Sud send to:

Non-Objectif Sud
560 Lorimer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA

Non-Objectif Sud is a non-for-profit 501(c) (3), all financial contibutions are tax deductible
to the fullest extent of the law.

Installation view

March 28 – May 9, 2009

Installation view

February 13 – March 7, 2009

Installation view

February 2 – March 14, 2009

A group exhibition of Dutch artists curated by Jan van der Ploeg.

Installation in cafe space

Exhibition in cafe space continues until May 2009.

(Boiler Room exhibition closed on January 26, 2009.)  

MINUS SPACE
Curated by Phong Bui
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
A Museum of Modern Art Affiliate
Long Island City, NY  

The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui, and includes the work of 54 artists from 14 countries. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary.

Participating Artists
Soledad Arias, Shinsuke Aso, Marcus Bering, Hartmut Böhm, Richard Bottwin, Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, Henry Brown, Vicente Butron, Bibi Calderaro, Melanie Crader, Mark Dagley, Julian Dashper, Christopher Dean, Matthew Deleget, Lynne Eastaway, Gabriele Evertz, Daniel Feingold, Kevin Finklea, Linda Francis, Zipora Fried, Daniel Göttin, Julio Grinblatt, Billy Gruner, Terry Haggerty, Lynne Harlow, Gilbert Hsiao, Andrew Huston, Simon Ingram, Inverted Topology, Kyle Jenkins, Mick Johnson, Steve Karlik, Sarah Keighery, Andrew Leslie, Daniel Levine, Sylvan Lionni, Lotte Lyon, Gerhard Mantz, Rossana Martinez, Juan Matos Capote, Douglas Melini, Manfred Mohr, Salvatore Panatteri, Dirk Rathke, Karen Schifano, Analia Segal, Edward Shalala, Tilman, Li-Trincere, Jan van der Ploeg, Don Voisine, Douglas Witmer & Michael Zahn

Ongoing Performance
Bibi Calderaro: PRESENT
Thursdays, 1-4pm, and Saturdays, 12-3pm, in the P.S.1 Cafe

Gerold Miller, Julian Daspher, Daniel Göttin (l to r)

Tilman & Kyle Jenkins (l to r)

Justin Andrews, Ian Anüll, Julian Daspher, Stephen Bram,
Marco Fusinato, Victoria Munro, Matthew Deleget (l to r)

January 17 – February 21, 2009

A ten year survey of PS in Amsterdam, founded by artist Jan van der Ploeg.  The work shown in Groningen includes three new installations by Kyle Jenkins, Gerold Miller, and Daniel Göttin, as well as the work of 26 other international artists.

Participating Artists: Justin Andrews, Ian Anüll, Karina Bisch, Stephen Bram, Lars Breuer, Jessica Centner, DAG, Julian Dashper, Matthew Deleget, Gunther Förch, Sebastian Freytag, Marco Fusinato, Daniel Göttin, Michelle Grabner, Terry Haggerty, Kent Hanssen, Kyle Jenkins, Ben Judd, Jean Luc Manz, Gerold Miller, Paul Morrison, Guido Münch, Victoria Munro, John Nixon, Max Presneill, Marie Shannon, D.J. Simpson, Michal Skoda, & Tilman.

Installation view

December 1-31, 2008

Exhibition poster

October 19, 2008 – May 4, 2009

(Daniel Göttin’s ceiling work in the cafe continues through summer 2009)

We are delighted to announce our exhibition at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, an affiliate of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. P.S.1 is one of the oldest and largest non-profit arts centers in the United States solely devoted to contemporary art.

The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui, and includes the work of 54 artists from 14 countries. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary.

We greatly thank curator Phong Bui and the remarkable staff at P.S.1, the participating artists and their galleries, and our generous donors, whose financial support made this exhibition possible.

Participating Artists
Soledad Arias, Shinsuke Aso, Marcus Bering, Hartmut Böhm, Richard Bottwin, Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, Henry Brown, Vicente Butron, Bibi Calderaro, Melanie Crader, Mark Dagley, Julian Dashper, Christopher Dean, Matthew Deleget, Lynne Eastaway, Gabriele Evertz, Daniel Feingold, Kevin Finklea, Linda Francis, Zipora Fried, Daniel Göttin, Julio Grinblatt, Billy Gruner, Terry Haggerty, Lynne Harlow, Gilbert Hsiao, Andrew Huston, Simon Ingram, Inverted Topology, Kyle Jenkins, Mick Johnson, Steve Karlik, Sarah Keighery, Andrew Leslie, Daniel Levine, Sylvan Lionni, Lotte Lyon, Gerhard Mantz, Rossana Martinez, Juan Matos Capote, Douglas Melini, Manfred Mohr, Salvatore Panatteri, Dirk Rathke, Karen Schifano, Analia Segal, Edward Shalala, Tilman, Li-Trincere, Jan van der Ploeg, Don Voisine, Douglas Witmer & Michael Zahn

Ongoing Performance
Bibi Calderaro: PRESENT
Thursdays, 1-4pm, and Saturdays, 12-3pm, in the P.S.1 Cafe

Interview
MINUS SPACE: The Art of Reduction, by Phong Bui
P.S.1 Newspaper, Fall/Winter 2008

Press / Blogs
Drunkard’s Walk vs. PMU, Ethan Ham blog, December 18, 2008

MINUS SPACE at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / MoMA, Abstract Contemporary Art Blog, December 18, 2008

Top Ten 2008, by Jerry Saltz, Artnet Magazine, December 15, 2008 (MINUS SPACE is cited in #10)

The Year in Art: The Top Nine Shows (and One Event), by Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine, December 7, 2008 (MINUS SPACE is cited in #10)

Michael Brennan at 210 Gallery and P.S.1, by Paul Corio, November 16, 2008

Interview with Simon Ingram / MINUS SPACE exhibition at P.S.1, New York, Vernissage TV, November 10, 2008

MINUS SPACE, by Eva Lake, November 10, 2008

MINUS SPACE at P.S.1, The James Kalm Report, November 2, 2008

Update, Henri Art Magazine, November 1, 2008

Reductive Art at P.S.1, by Jon Meyer, October 25, 2008

Gallery Credits
Hartmut Böhm courtesy of Bartha Contemporary, London, UK
Richard Bottwin courtesy of Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Metaphor Contemporary Art, Brooklyn, NY
Sharon Brant courtesy of Elizabeth Moore Fine Art, New York, NY
Melanie Crader courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Mark Dagley courtesy of Abaton Garage, Jersey City, NJ
Julian Dashper courtesy of Esso Gallery, New York, NY
Matthew Deleget courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Gabriele Evertz courtesy of Ober Gallery, Kent, CT
Daniel Feingold courtesy of Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, Sao Paolo, Brazil
Kevin Finklea courtesy of Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NY; Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Daniel Göttin courtesy of Hebel_121, Basel, Switzerland
Julio Grinblatt courtesy of Ruth Benzacar Galeria de Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Galeria Baro-Cruz, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Laura Marsiaj Arte Contemporanea, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Terry Haggerty courtesy of Andreas Grimm Gallery, New York, NY
Lynne Harlow courtesy of Cade Tompkins Editions, Providence, RI
Gilbert Hsiao courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Andrew Huston courtesy of Elizabeth Moore Fine Art, New York, NY
Simon Ingram courtesy of Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
Mick Johnson courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Steve Karlik courtesy of Anita Schwartz Galeria de Arte, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Andrew Leslie courtesy of Annandale Galleries, Sydney, Australia; John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
Sylvan Lionni courtesy of Freight + Volume, New York, NY
Lotte Lyon courtesy of Aoyama Meguro, Tokyo, Japan
Rossana Martinez courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Manfred Mohr courtesy of Bitforms Gallery, New York, NY
Dirk Rathke courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX 
Analia Segal courtesy of DPM Gallery, Miami, FL; Guayaquil, Ecuador
Tilman courtesy of CCNOA center for contemporary non-objective art, Brussels, Belgium
Jan van der Ploeg courtesy of Aschenbach & Hofland Galleries, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Don Voisine courtesy of Abaton Garage, Jersey City, NJ; McKenzie Fine Art, New York, NY
Michael Zahn courtesy of Eleven Rivington, New York, NY

Additional Credits
Poster & Flash Animation: Level Design Studio

Installation view

August 30 — October 5, 2008

Participating artists: Geeske Bijker, Rene van den Bos, Noël Drieghe, Daniel Göttin, Jasper van der Graaf, Arjan Jansen, Ditty Ketting, Jan van der Ploeg, Tonneke Sengers, Jan Maarten Voskuil.

Jan van der Ploeg, Wall Painting No. 251, 2008
Acrylic on wall, 365 x 372 cm

August 29 — October 18, 2008

Image by Ward Denys

August 31 — September 14, 2008

Organized by Billy Gruner (AUS), Tilman (D/B) & Jan van der Ploeg (NL) in cooperation with CCNOA Brussels (B). Participating artists include: Julian Dashper (NZ), Koen Delaere (NL), Ward Denys (B), Sacha Goerg (CH/B), Michelle Grabner (USA), Billy Gruner (AUS), Ro Hagers ((NL), Kyle Jenkins (AUS), Sarah Keigherty (AUS), Andrew Leslie (AUS), Gerold Miller (D), Leopoldine Roux (F/B), Ton Schuttelaar (NL), Ingrid-Maria Sinibaldi (F), Michal Skoda (CZ), John Tallman (USA), Tilman (D/B), Jan van der Ploeg (NL), Machiel van Soest (NL), Pieter Vermeersch (B), Jan Maarten Voskuil (NL) & Lars Wolter (D).

Thomas Wildner, certain improbability, 1 move, 59 steps, 2006

May 9 — July 5, 2008

Kunstverein Medienturm in Graz presents the group show UNFINISHED BUSINESS – DUTCH ABSTRACTS. The exhibition with Dutch-based artists, working in the field of non-objective /abstract art, features as a second part of a duo exhibition, the first part being AUSTRIAN ABSTRACTS in Amsterdam, 2006. Nowadays, one can sense a new interest in modernism and its variants amongst younger artists all over the world. For Holland and Austria being totally different countries with a very different history in modernism and very different geographic and political positions, it’s interesting to look closer into the local aspects in this usually unlocal territory of art. UNFINISHED BUSINESS is about isolation breaking the isolation. It’s about locality and internationalism, new and traditional ways of generating abstraction and its about progression and reference.  Participating artists include Geeske Bijker, Krijn de Koning, Driessens & Verstappen, Jan Robert Leegte, Peter Luining, Remko Scha, Martijn Schuppers, Jasper van der Graaf, Jan van der Ploeg, Jochem van der Spek, Ab van Hanegem, Jan Maarten Voskuil & Thomas Wildner.