Until 28 February, PontArte in Maastricht shows a duo presentation with work by two women artists: Dorine van der Ploeg and Ana García. The work of both artists is characterised by a keen sense of observation. Both García and Van der Ploeg show their immediate surroundings in this exhibition: the park near García's studio and the trees viewed from the window of Van der Ploeg's studio, respectively.
The figurative practice of the Spanish artist Ana García is mainly characterised by realistic oil paintings. For García, painting is a slow process, often inspired by her immediate surroundings. In 2020, she started a series of nocturnal works with a recurring theme: a park near her home and studio, in a village north of Barcelona. A park is generally signified by the people who use it; couples walking on the windy roads, children playing on the equipment. In García's paintings, however, we see a completely deserted park, dimly lit by a few lampposts. Stripped of its function and traces of use, the park and the accompanying playground are almost given a new context. And in the dark, when the world is still for a moment, there is suddenly room for the painter to really see this location, separate from her daily context as a working mother — García is a professor at the University of Barcelona, where she also received her education. In her hands, these locations take on something otherworldly or even magical. In addition to her own practice, the artist also has a great academic interest in the work of Antonio Lopèz, a Spanish realist painter who formed his own "school" in the 20th century. García discovered the artist's work when she was sixteen years old and years later she was invited to participate in his master class.
Dorine van der Ploeg mainly expresses herself through the medium of paper. She also uses her immediate environment as a source of inspiration and was initially also trained in the realistic style. For her playful and semi-abstract collages, the Dutch artist looks not only at the literal objects and spaces that surround her — from an abandoned swimming pool and the floor of her studio to a forest — but also at the colours, light and depth of the landscape. She tries to look intently, because we tend to look at something fleetingly and supplement the rest of the image with the image we already have in our head. The artist's materials of choice include scissors and a specific colour palette: a series of previously painted, coloured sheets of paper. Her practice therefore consists of two phases that are in fact separate from each other: painting paper in her studio (indoors) and searching for the most suitable colour and shape in the field (outdoors). Having a limited number of colours and shapes available results in a freer and less literal interpretation of the original image and forces Van der Ploeg to get to the essence of the image and come up with creative solutions. Sometimes that process takes several days. From 2022, Van der Ploeg's collages have also found a more three-dimensional expression in the form of installations, which will also be shown in PontArte. Last year her work was shown in Genoa and Wiesbaden, among others.