Tim Van Laere Gallery

Antwerp has a proud tradition of art. Peter Paul Rubens called it home in the 17th century, and the city continues to exert a pull on artists today. One of them is Rinus Van de Velde, whose large-scale charcoal drawings can be seen at the Tim Van Laere Gallery this autumn. Van de Velde describes his drawings as one-shot movies, single pictures that tell a whole episode of a fictional life. “Everything plays out in sets that I make in my atelier, creating a fictional environment in which real things happen,” he explains. “This tension between fiction and reality is an important theme in my work.” The artist, who studied sculpture before turning to drawing, draws on his training to create sets in his workshop using a variety of media.