+++Fragments in time, space and painting+++

+++Arjan van Helmond+++

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| An exploration of the things we surround ourselves with in our daily lives.

| A collection of residues of memories and connections that make up who we are.

The things we surround ourselves with in our daily lives are a shadow of who we are. The house we live in, the carpet under our feet, the colour of the wallpaper, souvenirs and knickknacks in the closet contain residues of memories and sentiments.

'They are not carefully arranged still lifes, rather a subtle ‘still for a moment’. As if the artist has pressed the pause button of everyday life, very briefly.'

- Marieke Jooren (author)

what speaks to us. Arjan van Helmond is a publication about the oeuvre of visual artist Arjan van Helmond, which offers a broad overview of his work from the past 12 years. The book is a moment to look back, reflect, collect and connect.

'Working handmade, almost notational, almost always on paper, Arjan van Helmond seems to start and end in this condition of ‘exposure’, this nakedness to the operations of the world. Along the way – through a de- cidedly human-scale practice, with none of the overin- flated posture of the artist as hero – Van Helmond has posed a kind of lexicon of discovery and encounter: moments of reckoning, where the details seem to offer (or rather insist on?) the potential for meaningfulness.'

- Jeremiah Day (author)

This publication will be presented during the exhibition Arjan van Helmond | Re-Collection in Museum MORE, Gorssel, which will be on view from January 23 until June 6, 2022.

 

About the artist

Arjan van Helmond (1971) is interested in painting as a medium that helps us think about objects, places and representations of spaces of our daily lives. His art practice focusses on appropriating through painting the unspectacular and even banal aspects of daily life: a view of the sea, a garden, the house we live in, the carpet under our feet, souvenirs and trinkets in the closet. Images that tell us a story and yet, his paintings are not explicitly narrative. Instead they use ordinary and evocative details to build up a form of realism, to trace a path between history, culture, cliché and everyday human behaviour;

Besides maintaining an artistic career, with international exhibitions in New York (USA) and Los Angeles (USA) London (UK), Sydney (Australia) and Shanghai (China), he teaches Painting at AKI-ArtEZ School for Art and Design in Enschede and is engaged as a advisor for AFK, the Amsterdam Art Foundation and CAWA.