By Lieneke Hulshof

Artist Daan van Golden draws no distinction between art and daily life. This notion is embodied in the borrowed photograph of Kasimir Malevich, lying on his deathbed under a white sheet and surrounded by flowers. In this painting, everyday death goes hand-in-hand with the visual arts; the paintings of figures on the walls seem to mourn for Malevich and hold a vigil over him. It shows that the life of an artist cannot be separated from art, not even in death. In works such as this, there is an inevitability about how the ‘eternal’ and everyday routine are combined by the resting artist, the suprematist black square in which Malevich is trying to imagine a higher reality, and the light that falls on the white sheets. Van Golden needs no religious motive for involving the afterlife in his oeuvre; according to the artist, it is implicitly present in most of his works. “The spirituality you put into your work, remains there forever”.