Seven x Seven: Seven Artists, Seven Weekends, Seven Exhibitions

Installation view

ALBADA JELGERSMA GALLERY

Serious art calls for serious time. Time to look. To really see the work and allow it to move you. Starting Friday January 17, Albada Jelgersma Gallery invites you to Seven x Seven. Seven weekends, seven Dutch artists. Two days for each artist. Just you and a few works. Take a seat. Have something to drink. Jot down responses and reflections in a notebook. Just let art do its work.

​Session Seven | Arjan van Helmond
Friday February 28, 11am-7pm
and Saturday February 29, 11am-6pm 
The artist is present Friday February 28, 6-7pm
 
For the final session of Seven x Seven, Arjan van Helmond shows two recent works, both from the ‘Tree’ series. A work on paper and a work on canvas. Both works originate from the same image. They form a natural progression from his solo exhibition Fragments of Garden he had at the gallery in 2019, which featured plants and objects from the garden of van Helmond’s family house in Lebanon. The viewer looks up the tree, almost as if you’re leaning against it. The trunk consists almost solely of blank canvas or paper. Paint is used for the background, the sky and the places between branches. This makes the trunk light up, as if shot by a camera with flash. As you look up, snow falls down. Light and perspective give the image an undeniable tension, triggering the viewer to ponder about how the nature of an object changes, depending on the point of view. Looking at the work becomes an emotional act on its own.

Arjan van Helmond lives and works in Amsterdam. He graduated from the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 2004. In October 2019 he created a public artwork in the NS Station of Leeuwarden, named Golfbrekers. In 2018 he received the Jeanne Oosting Prize. Solo exhibitions include: Kranenburgh Bergen (2018); De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam (2017); Lucebert Huis, Bergen (2017); LUMC, Leiden (2010). Group exhibition include Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (2014); Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht (2011); White Box, NY (2001). His work is part of the following collections: The Saatchi Gallery, Museum Het Domein, De Nederlandsche Bank, Chadha Art Collection, Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Heden, Schunck, The Schorr Family Collection, Rabo Art Collection.
 
Artist statement:
What happens if nothing happens? How should we describe, question, take into account what happens every day (or not), but returns every day: the banal, the everyday, the obvious, the ordinary, the background noise? More and more often we find ourselves in a virtual relationship with reality, via our telephones and computers. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space?

In my work I try to trace a path between history, culture, cliché and daily habits; I research the trivial spaces and objects, which we encounter and move in daily without a second glance or thought. I try to appropriate them by painting them with great attention and concentration. I often use photographic material, taken from my own archive or from the internet, but the act of painting must always exceed the photographic level. Painting is by definition an interpretation of the reality, captured by a photograph. The paintings of empty spaces and objects, and more recently also of landscape elements, invite you to make an inner movement: a specific idea comes to the surface, with fragments of memories, followed by emotions and sensations, that belong to them. In my work I’m looking for the psychological potential of the image. At first instance, this process is an exploration of personal experiences associated with places and objects. The everyday things, which you do not give a second glance at first, now suddenly become special and valuable. They‘re able to tell us something about ourselves.

​ALBADA JELGERSMA GALLERY
Lijnbaansgracht 318
1017 WZ Amsterdam
The Netherlands

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