Jan Adriaans

Jan Adriaans (b. 1972, Veghel, the Netherlands) studied photography at St. Joost Art Academy in Breda, and continued his studies at various other art institutions.

Depending on the project in which he is involved, Jan Adriaans works with different media. Sometimes that is photography, but it could be video, sound, a performance or a text.

In much of his current work, Adriaans criticises the tendency toward individualism. He considers it to be an illusion, the idea that a person is free and takes decisions entirely autonomously. He is interested in capturing human behaviour within specific power relationships, and sees art as something well suited to this because, as Adriaans says, “Art can visualise such patterns and make them tangible.”

Characteristic of Adriaans’s photographic work, are sober, somewhat detached, compositions. His representations of the places where people congregate, work or live, incorporate this precise sense of detail.