During Amsterdam Art Week 2025, dudokdegroot will present Upclose, a solo exhibition by Ilona Plaum, running parallel to the solo Presence at Huis Marseille. The exhibition will open during the Festive Gallery Night on Thursday 22 May from 17:00.
Ilona Plaum takes the viewer into her poetic universe, where she puts our perception on shaky ground. Only when you start to doubt do you encounter an undeniable truth: doubt compels you to observe and lets you experience that you exist.
Plaum connects her three-dimensional models, painted depictions, and the photographic flat surface in illusions. In these illusions, she applies the rules of paradox: she alternates between surface and depth perception, making the background the foreground; shadows become tangible and appear to move. In this way, Plaum takes the viewer from invented to real spaces, and vice versa. Due to the deliberate imperfections visible in the work, it becomes clear that the elements are handmade. This momentarily brings the viewer back to the starting point of the work, the moment it was created by the artist.
On Friday 23 May, Ilona Plaum will present the book at the gallery and during an artist talk she will discuss her work in the exhibition and the book.
Ilona Plaum (1970, Amsterdam) studied Jewelry Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She later developed herself further as an autonomous artist. Her work is part of the museum collection of Huis Marseille, as well as the corporate collections of Ahold, UMC Utrecht, and NN Group, and in private collections in the Netherlands and abroad. Plaum is represented by galerie dudokdegroot.
Solo PRESENCE at Huis Marseille
During Amsterdam Art Week 2025, Ilona Plaum’s first solo museum exhibition will be held at Huis Marseille. This museum has been following the work of Ilona Plaum for years. In 2012, 2013, 2017, and 2019, works by Plaum were included in the collection, and her work was exhibited in De herontdekking van de wereld (2013) and Pictures from Another Wall. The Huis Marseille Collection on Show in De Pont (2020).
Publication
In May, a publication with the same title about the work of Ilona Plaum will be released by Jap Sam Books. The authors are Hans den Hartog Jager and Ilona Plaum. The design is by Meeusontwerp. This publication has been made possible by subsidies from the Mondriaan Fund, the Jaap Harten Foundation, the Niemeijer Foundation, and crowdfunding via Voordekunst.
