ILONA PLAUM | UPCLOSE II

Galerie dudokdegroot cordially invites you to Upclose II by Ilona Plaum. The exhibition will run during the summer months from 9 July until Saturday 16 August.

Ilona Plaum invites the viewer to descend into her poetic universe, where she disrupts and challenges our perception. Only when doubt sets in do we encounter an undeniable truth: doubt prompts observation and lets us experience that we exist.

Plaum unites her three-dimensional scale models, painted scenes, and the flat photographic plane into illusions. Within these illusions, she employs the rules of paradox: alternating the experience of surface and depth, turning background into foreground; shadows become tangible and seem to move. In doing so, Plaum transports the viewer from invented to existing spaces and vice versa. Deliberate imperfections visible in the work reveal that the elements are made by hand. For a fleeting moment, this brings the viewer back to the work's point of origin—the moment it was crafted by the artist.

Ilona Plaum
Ilona Plaum (1970, Amsterdam) studied Metalsmithing and Jewelry Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, after which she further developed her practice as an autonomous artist. Her work is held in the museum collection of Huis Marseille as well as in the corporate collections of Ahold, UMC Utrecht, and NN Group, and in private collections both nationally and internationally. Her work has been shown in exhibitions including De herontdekking van de wereld (2013) and Pictures from Another Wall. The Huis Marseille Collection on Show in De Pont (2020).

Publication
Jap Sam Books has published a monograph on the work of Ilona Plaum, authored by Hans den Hartog Jager and Ilona Plaum, with graphic design by Meeusontwerp. This publication was made possible with generous support from the Mondriaan Fonds, the Stichting Jaap Harten Fonds, the Stichting Niemeijer Fonds, and crowdfunding via Voordekunst.