Inside Rinus Van de Velde’s Imaginary Landscapes

Rinus Van de Velde has a thing for parallel universes and imaginary landscapes.

The Belgian artist, who paints, sculpts, directs, and performs, dedicates his art to this fascination. His work focuses on the power of imagination, exploring its ability to transform our perception of everyday life into fictional autobiographies, where he is the protagonist.

Van de Velde opens his solo exhibition, I Want to Eat Mangos in the Bathtub (8 March–12 May 2024), at Art Sonje Center and Space ISU in Seoul.

Based on an fictitious life, the exhibition invites visitors to follow the artist’s journey across art history, as if he were a pleinairist from the early 20th century.

In I want to eat mangos in the bathtub while watching the sun, moon and clouds go by (2023), Van de Velde depicts a pink sky, with a handwritten quote matching the title at its base. The painting is made up of rough, short strokes of pink pastel, melting into green, yellow, blue, and brown hues, suggesting an abstract sunset. The quote references Henri Matisse‘s journey to France in the summer of 1904 in search of the best light for painting outside.

While Van de Velde’s abstract paintings are lyrical, showing luminous visions of light in imagined landscapes, his films are harder to interpret with their fragmented storylines unravelling strange, not-quite-real worlds.

In A Life in a Day (2021–2023) and La Ruta Natural (2019–2021), the same character follows ‘a life in a day’ storyline among sets of lush green forests and seabeds covered in coral, all handmade from cardboard, paper, and other materials.

The character dons a mask resembling Van de Velde’s face with hollow eyes that lend an air of the uncanny. While the artist endeavours to embody this character, the absence of eyes and concealment of facial expressions thwart viewers’ ability to accept this transformation. This eerie imagery prompts the question: who is behind the mask?

The exhibition coincides with a presentation of Van de Velde’s work in the group show On Paper (2 March–6 April 2024) at Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris. The artist also has a solo exhibition at Tim Van Laere Gallery opening in Rome on 4 May 2024.

Main image: Rinus Van de Velde, La Ruta Natural (2019–2021) (still). Single channel video, 13 min, 34 sec. © Rinus Van de Velde. Courtesy Gallery Baton, Seoul.