Hetzler | Marfa is pleased to announce The Dinner, a solo exhibition of new works by Rinus Van de Velde, for the gallery’s annual presentation in Marfa, Texas. Bringing together oil pastels, charcoals, sculpture, and film, the exhibition presents the most comprehensive overview of Van de Velde’s practice in the US to date.
Across his oeuvre, Van de Velde explores the porous boundaries between reality and imagination, viewing them not as opposing forces but rather as intimately connected. A self-proclaimed ‘armchair voyager’, Van de Velde interweaves elements of truth and fantasy to narrate his own fictional autobiography from the comfort of his studio. Featuring a selection of oil pastels in a ‘salon-style’ display, alongside the artist’s charcoal paintings, sculptures, and two films, The Dinner opens a new chapter of the artist’s fictional world. The exhibition centres around an imagined gallery dinner, which brings together an eclectic gathering of artists and cultural figures, both living and deceased, where playful and reflective conversations unfold, and humour, scrutiny, reality and illusion become inextricably entwined.
Van de Velde’s intricately rendered oil pastel on paper composition, Everything that remains will be unintended sculptures., 2025, offers a thematic starting point for the exhibition. Portrayed in the dead of night, the work presents a table situated in an empty field of grass, and plunged in darkness. The pristine white tablecloth bears the traces of a party: vases of flowers, bottles of champagne, and the dim glow of fading candles. Situated in an ambiguous location, with no chairs or party dwellers in sight, the painting remains as the only trace or aftermath of Van de Velde’s imagined rendezvous. The table becomes an emblem of lingering memory which, as the artist poetically conveys, lives on as unintended sculpture. In this way, it alludes to the snare-pictures of Daniel Spoerri (1930–2024), in which assemblages of leftover meals become sculptural objects. The work further resonates with Van de Velde’s cardboard sculpture, The dinner, 2025, which presents a model of a table surrounded by vacant chairs, as if waiting eternally for its guests to arrive.
Unfolding in some remote far-away place, the setting of Van de Velde’s dinner has an uncanny resonance with the unique landscape of Marfa. Each painting offers an imagined scenario in which guests make their way to the dinner, often through surreal or unexpected means – rowing a boat through choppy waters, galloping on horseback like a Texan cowboy through barren land, or driving a car through lush, overgrown fields. One guest, in Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it. …, 2025, appears to politely decline from a tiny hut in an absurdly isolated location, whilst in Some of you will not be invited. …, 2025, the artist presents a once hopeful gate-crasher who is met with a tangled web of foliage and nowhere to turn.
The works reference a multitude of figures spanning different eras from art history and beyond. Drawing from a source photograph of Albert Oehlen (b. 1954) painting en plein air, I know you’d also like to take care of the music…, 2025, alludes to the German artist’s love of music. Referencing Norbert Schwontkowski (1949–2013), Rodney Graham (1949–2022), and Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) in It’s got to be Norbert, Maurizio or Rodney., 2025, Van de Velde’s depiction of a bicycle – a recurring motif in his work – becomes a poignant symbol of mental travel. The act of walking or riding a bike, he explains, sets the mind adrift, prompting daydreams and inspiration to flow.
The exhibition culminates in the artist’s monumental charcoal on canvas painting, Bill, Bob, Alice, …, 2025. Rendered in black and white, the work takes on a more serious tone. The artist’s guests are gathered in a space which lies somewhere between a conference room and a courtroom. Van de Velde, seated at the centre, addresses some of the most renowned figures in art history, whose names he alludes to in an inscription at the base of the work. In a layering of imaginary realms, the composition directly references the iconic scene from the film The Godfather Part II (1974), in which Frank Pentangeli testifies in court. Dissipating into the black-and-white language of the past, Van de Velde’s dinner party seems to draw to a close. ‘In the end,’ the artist notes, ‘it’s only echoes in your head’.
In his cardboard sculptures, Van de Velde depicts fictional scenes from his studio and everyday life. A number of them present miniature versions of the life-size sculptures he creates as props for his films, further blurring the distinctions between reality and illusion. Like the drawings, they tell stories that feed Van de Velde’s fictional world, envisaging dialogues with artists such as Alfred Wallis (1855–1942) in A Studio for a pleinairist, 2025, or David Hockney (b. 1937) in I’ll take one more dive, David, 2025. Portraying a rendition of Hockney’s famous swimming pool, Van de Velde here imagines himself as the model for Hockney’s The Bigger Splash, 1967.
The exhibition also features two of Van de Velde’s films, both shot entirely in his studio, which play on a loop. La Ruta Natural, 2019–2021, a palindrome, follows the artist’s alter ego, portrayed by his studio assistant who wears a mask of his face, as he wanders endlessly through a dreamlike world. A Life in a Day, 2021–2023, presents Van de Velde’s work as an intimate self-portrait, immersing the viewer in the artist’s internal process as we follow a plein air painter’s journey through a tropical jungle and into a swimming pool, before emerging in an underground archive. It layers multiple realities: the artist’s everyday life, his imaginative wanderings in nature, and the depths of his personal archive, revealing how Van de Velde moves seamlessly between disparate realms.
Rinus Van de Velde (b. 1983, Leuven) lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held at Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2024); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (2023); BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (2022); Kunstmuseum Luzern; FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Nantes (both 2021); KWM artcentre, Beijing; Bærum Kulturhus, Sandvika (both 2019); Kunstpalais Erlangen (2018); Nest, The Hague (2017); Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague (2016); S.M.A.K, Ghent (2015, 2008); Kunsthalle São Paulo (2015); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Malaga (2013); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2012); Institut für zeitgenössische Kunst, Nürnberg (2010); and Lokaal 001, Antwerp (2008). Van de Velde’s works are in the collections of Belfius Art Collection, Brussels; CAC Malaga; Colección SOLO, Madrid; Erasmus University Rotterdam; FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Nantes; Ghisla Art Collection, Locarno; Karel De Grote Hogeschool, Antwerp; Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague; Kunstmuseum Luzern; KWM artcenter, Beijing; M HKA, Antwerp; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; and S.M.A.K., Ghent, among others.
Press contact:
Hetzler | Marfa
Sabrina Lejeanvre
sabrina@maxhetzler.com
+1 432 703-3430
Honor Westmacott
honor@maxhetzler.com
+49 30 346 497 85-0
www.facebook.com/galeriemaxhetzler
www.instagram.com/galeriemaxhetzler
