Rinus Van de Velde «Dear Friends,…»

The practice of Belgium artist Rinus Van de Velde (*1983, Leuven, Belgium) explores the idea of appropriation and tests the possible meanings of an existing image. In the last years, he has been transporting images into large format charcoal drawings, which are presented juxtaposed with text captions, guiding the viewer through the story he wants to tell.

After some years appropriating images from other photographers, Van de Velde decided to produce the images himself, in order to explore the borders between fiction and reality. Interested in creating fictional autobiographies, the artist started to produce images in which he and some colleagues are depicted posing as characters of these invented stories.

Working collaboratively with a craftsman, a writer and a photographer, they build up stages to evoke the illusion of places, create the text for the captions and pose for the photographs to be appropriated in the charcoal drawings. The result is a body of work composed by several possible characters of the artist, spanning from a hallucinatory outsider living in an isolated island, to a 19th century sculptor.

For the exhibition «Dear Friends,…» at KUNSTHALLE São Paulo, his first solo show in Brazil, Rinus Van de Velde presents a new series created specifically for the project True Lies, that presented two different artists working with appropriation. The artist will produce a site-specific work, composed by paper drawings framed in a big wall drawing.