Arjan van Helmond - What speaks to us

Arjan van Helmond approaches painting as a medium that helps us think about objects, places, and representations of the spaces of our daily lives. His practice focuses on appropriating the unspectacular and even banal aspects of daily life. Images that tell 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, cliche, and everyday human behaviour. Published with an exhibition of Van Helmond's work curated by Marieke Jooren, this compendium gives us pause, allowing us to reminisce about those 'unspecial' things which can nevertheless hold emotional value.