"Rinus Van de Velde’s art touches us because the artist draws us in to his confrontation with external expectations and internal emotions.” Fanni Fetzer, Director, Kunstmuseum Luzern


Rinus Van de Velde has made remarkable strides in recent years in the development of his oeuvre. Best known for his large-scale charcoal drawings at the start of his career, he now positions himself as a total artist, using a range of different media and forms of expression such as drawing, sculpture, installations and film.


Initially, Van de Velde used found photographs and images as a basis for his drawings, but he later went in search of ways of exercising more control over the images. He achieved this through an extensive process of scene-building, in which he cast himself and those around him in different roles and characters in order to fit them into the narrative discourse of his fictional autobiography. These scenes were built up life-size, with even the tiniest detail being reproduced in wood and cardboard.


This book focuses on this part of his artistic activity and has been produced to mark the eponymous solo show in Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland. With a textual contribution from Fanni Fetzer and Koen Sels.


Text in English and German.