RINUS VAN DE VELDE
Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Rinus Van de Velde. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in the Berlin spaces.
January 17 - February 22, 2025
In a practice spanning drawing, installation, sculpture and video work, Rinus Van de Velde creates a fictional autobiography, drawing on imagined memories of a life never lived. In his pictorial world, the possibilities of reality have no limits. Due to their unusually large format, Van de Velde’s drawings are reminiscent of paintings, giving the medium an autonomous character. While he initially worked exclusively with charcoal, in recent years the artist began to introduce colour to his works, creating larger oil pastels, alongside small pencil drawings. In the works on paper, handwritten texts can be found underneath the pictures, testifying to fears, wishes and longings, among other things. The words anchor the drawings in a larger narrative and determine their place within it. The video works and sculptures, which are often props for the artist’s films or depict scenes in miniature, are also part of this construct. Here the textual element can be found again in the extensive titles.
In addition to Van de Velde’s latest video work, the current exhibition also presents new charcoal and oil pastel drawings as well as sculptures, thus uniting the various aspects of the artist’s oeuvre. References to the theme of plein air and its proponents, including Claude Monet and David Hockney, can be found throughout. Despite this connection, the individual works are self-contained and tell an independent story. In his works, Van de Velde engages in a friendly, imaginary dialogue with bygone artists, seeking to continue their oeuvre by recontextualising it. This is particularly evident in his oil pastel drawings, which often depict vast landscapes or still lifes. Contrary to the artist’s fantasy of being an open-air artist himself, all of his works are created in his studio, opening up another level of fiction.
The video work A Life in a Day, 2021–2023, shows Van de Velde’s alter ego, represented by his studio assistant, who wears a mask of the artist’s face. The protagonist goes about his daily routine, carrying a suitcase that holds his thoughts, ideas and visualisations. After painting outdoors surrounded by a jungle landscape, he is seen descending through a swimming pool – in an allusion to Hockney – and into an underground archive. This place represents Van de Velde’s mind, turning the scene into an intimate self-portrait. In the charcoal drawing Claude, I said, you have to listen, ..., 2024, Monet is depicted walking across a bridge in his garden in Giverny. With the intensive use of light and shadow and the dialogue from the accompanying text, the work is reminiscent of a still from a film. The oil pastel drawing entitled Dear Alexej, I don't have a studio..., 2024, shows a sunset over a vast sea. In his role as an imaginary open-air painter, the artist enters into a dialogue with Alexej von Jawlensky, informing him that he himself does not have a studio, but can be found every day in the place depicted.
In Van de Velde’s work, the dichotomies of truth and illusion, reality and imagination become blurred. The possible is combined with the impossible, opening up a multitude of realities to the viewer. The artist explains: ‘My work is always based on fiction, placed alongside reality. It is about the truth and a lie. Where is the real in all of it? And this is interesting I think, for me to mix it all up’.