LONDON.- Camden Arts Centre presents today Daan van Golden: Red or Blue, on view through February 8, 2009. Renowned and celebrated in The Netherlands since the 1960s, Daan van Golden presents his first solo exhibition in the UK at Camden Arts Centre. In his meticulously executed paintings and photographs he seeks out beauty in the insignificant, using everyday motifs and images taken from the history of art.

Curated by Anne Pontégnie and organised by Camden Arts Centre, the exhibition includes over thirty paintings from the 1960’s to the present and a number of photographs which include a selection from the series Youth is an art, images van Golden took of his daughter as she was growing up from 1978 – 1996.

Van Golden’s painting style is based on appropriation, using motifs such as decorative wallpaper and fabric, and later from the history of art. He paints these images and forms with meticulous precision, achieving an eccentrically flawless surface. They cross over a broad range of art strategies – from pop and photorealism to structural and conceptual art, minimalism to abstraction.

‘His appropriation is not an impertinent pilfering of images from the storehouse which our world culture offers, but rather a mark of respect and affectation, an openness and sense of beauty which is sweet balm for the eye and spirit.’ Carel Blotkamp

In his younger years van Golden travelled extensively earning his living by diverse means - as a fashion photographer, a film extra in gangster movies and an English teacher. While living in Japan in the early sixties he became very interested in the art of meditation and Zen philosophy, an experience which significantly altered his painting style.

In art as in the world, van Golden seeks and finds elements that allow him to exercise his subtle art as a student of forgotten forms. He discovers strange bodies hidden in the enlarged detail of a Pollock (Study Pollock), an abstract form in the silhouette of a parakeet cut out by Matisse (Blue Study After Matisse, 2003), and smiling faces in the hearts of violets found in India (New Delhi, 1991).

This will be van Golden’s first major international exhibition tour, showing at two other European institutions. The exhibition will be accompanied by a full colour catalogue.

Born in 1936, Daan van Golden lives and works in Schiedam in The Netherlands. Although van Golden has exhibited widely close to home, in The Netherlands, Belgium and France, he has never had a major solo show in the UK or USA until his recent gallery show at Greene Naftali, New York (2008). He came to international attention when he represented Holland in the XVLIII Venice Biennale (1999) and has had an on-going dialogue with Belgium freelance curator Anne Pontégnie since his participation in the 7th Lyon Biennale which she curated in 2003. Solo exhibitions include Golden Years, Museum Boijmans van Beuningenm Rotterdam (2006); Mitukoshi, Gemeente Museum, Den Haag, The Netherlands (2001); Tokyo 1964, Galerie Brutto Gusto, Rotterdam (2000); Youth is an Art, Konsthalle Goteborg, Sweden (1999), Institut Neerlandais, Paris, France (1998), Museum Boijmans Ven Beuningen, Rotterdam (1997). He is represented by Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

Showing concurrently in Gallery 3 is an exhibition by Andro Wekua. Wekua employs the still of the craft maker and the atmosphere of the theatre to create introspective, melancholic installations. For his first solo exhibition in the UK, Wekua (born Georgia, 1977) presents a new installation incorporating a sculpture, and a staged display of paintings and graphic works, alongside a new film.