(New York, NY—May 14th, 2026) Van Der Plas Gallery presents Flip the Switch, a vibrant and colorful group exhibition marking the gallery’s reopening. Turning its lights back on, the gallery celebrates resilience with an energetic mix of paintings, collages, tapestries, drawings, and ceramics. The exhibition features a dynamic roster of artists, including Jason McLean, Devon Marinac, Susan Day, Alejandro Caiazza, Ron Burman, Justin Duerr, Konstantin Bokov, Juan Carlos Pinto, Christine Randolph, E.F. Higgins, and Anne Marie Grgich.

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The exhibition centers on the human figure as a vehicle for emotion, narrative, and social reflection. Across the exhibition, bold color palettes and expressive surfaces create a dynamic visual dialogue between disruption and renewal, and a broader desire to move forward together—as a community and beyond.

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At the heart of Flip the Switch is Jason McLean’s View the New, an immersive work that captures the emotional intensity and movement of contemporary life. Through layered imagery, handwritten text, and expressive mark-making, McLean creates a figurative abstraction rooted in memory, emotion, and a search for balance. Interwoven comical faces reveal themselves throughout the complex viewing experience while pale chartreuse, deep blues, strawberry reds, metallic silvers, and luminous golds create a rhythmic composition that mirrors the chaos and beauty of the lived experience.

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Also featured is Ron Burman’s brutish yet playful series of colorful portraits depicting imaginary figures. Burman’s exaggerated portraits and vibrant palette bring humor and raw emotional energy to the exhibition, balancing absurdity with tenderness.

In The Luxor of Pharaohs, Alejandro Caiazza uses a bright, playful palette to create a sense of spectacle that contrasts with the work’s deeper psychological tension. Through sculptural impasto and embedded fabric, the painting becomes a symbolic meditation on hierarchy, authority, and vulnerability.

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Together, the works in Flip the Switch trace a collective journey from instability toward renewal. Through expressive figuration, tactile surfaces, and fearless color, the exhibition reflects not only the reopening of the gallery but a broader human desire to reconnect, rebuild, and move forward together. The act of “flipping the switch” becomes more than a metaphor for recovery; it becomes a shared call to reignite creative energy, human connection, and collective optimism. In a moment when much of the world feels fractured and uncertain, the exhibition asks what becomes possible when communities choose to turn the lights back on together. The gallery’s recovery mirrors a larger cultural and emotional renewal, fueled by art, resilience, and the belief that new beginnings are created collectively, not alone.