Rinus Van de Velde
Here we are (…)
2013
Fine Art Giclée-Print on Somerset Satin, 280 g/qm
38 × 48 cm
Edition of 50 copies, signed and numbered by the artist
Out of stock
about this work
As with all his editions, Here we are (…) does not picture a charcoal drawing. Rinus Van de Velde’s editions rather depict the photographs of the staged scenes on which his drawings are based – in this case a wall drawing that was made on the occasion of the group exhibition For The Time Being. Wall Paintings. Painted Walls at Kunsthalle Bielefeld in 2013.
about Rinus Van de Velde
Everyone is familiar with the monumental charcoal drawings by Rinus Van de Velde. However, this artist has much more to offer than just drawing – he also makes film, sculpture, small drawings in coloured pencil, works in oil pastel, installations and ceramic ashtrays. As an introduction to his broad artistic work, we have brief look at the last years of his practice. Rinus Van de Velde started out as an obsessive draftsman and made – rather small – drawings with Siberian chalk on paper. These were based on an archive of photographic images from an endless collection of old National Geographic magazines. Van de Velde took these drawings from their original context and combined them with fragments of self-written text. Each of these drawings was a separate element in an ever-growing narrative.
After a few years, however, the same characters start to appear in his drawings. These characters are always creative geniuses in a very specific time and place – a modernist artist named William Crowder, or a communist poet at the beginning of 20th century Russia. Although these characters are not real alter egos, elements from Van de Velde’s own life inevitably slipped into his work.
This mixture of life and work continues in a series from 2012 entitled Self-Portrait as… In these works, the artist portrays himself as a central figure but assumes various roles. He is, for example, …a tennis hero or …the young Ellsworth Kelly. Van de Velde soon also starts portraying a number of close friends as characters in his drawings. The series The Story of Frederic, Conrad, Jim and Rinus (2013), for example, also includes writer Koen Sels and Van de Velde’s gallerist Tim Van Laere. For this series, Van de Velde stages a number of situations in elaborate decors, that he photographs extensively before drawing in large format. In further series, Van de Velde continues in the same way. The sets he builds in his studio become larger and more complex. Every element in these sets – from houseplant to full bathtub – is from cardboard, emphasising the fictional and unreal character of these sets
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