Rinus Van de Velde at Kunstmuseum Luzern

Artist: Rinus Van de Velde

Exhibition title: I’d rather stay at home, …

Curated by: Fanni Fetzer

Venue: Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern, Switzerland

Date: March 3 – June 20, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kunstmuseum Luzern

Rinus Van de Velde (*1983) tells fictional autobiographical stories by means of large-format charcoal drawings, three-dimensional cardboard worlds, films, photographs, coloured-pencil drawings and ceramics. Hovering between reality and fiction, imperfect heroes inhabit his works, high-minded researchers and lanky tennis players in long hotel corridors.

With I’d rather stay at home, … the Kunstmuseum Luzern is devoting a first comprehensive solo exhibition to the Belgian artist Rinus Van de Velde. At the heart of the presentation are the videos The Villagers (2019–2020) and La Ruta Natural (2019–2021). The Villagers tells the stories of various protagonists linked by a mountain village and rainy weather: one adventurer roasts his suckling pig in the woods, another is driving along in the middle of nowhere, while one artist appropriates a hotel room and the other paints upside down in a studio. La Ruta Natural (nature path) is Rinus Van de Velde’s second film. The title is a palindrome, a sequence of letters that make (the same) sense when read forwards or backwards. In La Ruta Natural the hero seems to be adhering to a plan that ends with him blowing up a red balloon using compli-cated machinery and then letting it fly away. On his way, the hero drives a bright blue cabriolet down a spectacularly steep mountain pass. He then douses the vehicle with petrol and sets it alight. The car already made an appearance in The Villagers, but now the driver is wearing a mask showing Rinus Van de Velde’s face, so that he looks like a puppet. Visitors to the exhibi-tion are confronted with this mask at the entrance. The films run in an endless loop, and the exhibition does not follow a linear narrative. The same protagonists, props and scenes turn up in drawings, films and sets, and often the objects only really reveal themselves after a second encounter with them. And often the objects only emerge clearly when encountered for the second time. In this way the visitors become more and more immersed in Van de Velde’s cos-mos, taking decisions at every crossroads until finally almost getting lost among the props; between a metre-long tunnel, through which the film’s protagonist reaches an underground machine room, and the roof of a house projecting out of the flood waters and offering a couple refuge in the film.

Rinus Van de Velde builds his sets in his studio paying great attention to detail and using wooden slats, cardboard and papier-maché. The heroes in his works recall types from films and stories, figures who are no longer significant: the taciturn loudmouth struggling alone through the remotest regions, the introverted hero alone in his studio busy with his life’s work. The futility of their expeditions and the absurdity of their undertakings awaken our curiosity, causing us to smile at human inadequacy.

Rinus Van de Velde uses the drawing to give form to an idea or plan, to visualise ideas and create his fictional universes. The drawings cite pseudo-autobiographical moments from the artist’s life: adopting random identities as a researcher in a dugout canoe or as a painter in his studio. In doing this, the artist make free use of the art-historical repertoire of painting styles. Playful ceramic pieces referencing Bob Dylan or Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde consti-tute independent objects.

Rinus Van de Velde, I’d rather stay at home, …, 2021, exhibition view, Kunstmuseum Luzern, photo: Marc Latzel

Rinus Van de Velde, Some art historians and lousy curators kept searching in the totally wrong directions, 2016, 100 x 120 cm, Tim Van Laere Collection, Antwerpen / Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerpen

Rinus Van de Velde, I want to come as close as possible, 2016, 102 x 96 cm, Collection Elke Segers, Antwerpen / Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerpen