For this exhibition, Paul Winker devised plans for his paintings by pursuing an almost monastic-like devotion to the unforeseen details of everyday life. The folds of a beloved’s blouse, a security-lined envelope, the detailing of a cereal box, a cartooned comforter. Cropped compositions blown up and rendered with precise, traced templates laid down upon the base ground. Flipping our expectations back and forth between illusory and flat formulations, altogether wily patterns amidst droll color combos. An all-consuming heat of looking, cooling into a condensed register, ready to be received anew yet again.
Jan van der Ploeg’s geometric wall paintings reach back into the framework of modernist forebears, echoing graphic displays and pulling the viewer into a bold backdrop for active collaboration and conversation alike. Oftentimes, one only needs such a platform to open up the room to new ideas that borrow and build on backstory, and what is hinted at in the details glimpsed in the paintings of both artists.
