While his heroes are on the road, driving a cabriolet across the Alps, through a tunnel into the sea, caught in a downpour at a fork in the road or alone in the woods with a whole piglet roasting over a fire, Rinus Van de Velde (*1983) prefers to be in his studio. He thinks travelling is much too dangerous! With his films, cardboard sets and polystyrene objects he constructs a sprawling universe—in which his figures and the viewers become equally entangled.

His stories thrive on repetitions and contradictions, his figures turn up in large paintings, intimate drawings and scenes made of ceramics. These recurring figures are not related, acquainted or in competition with one another. They are focussed on themselves, confident in their projects, undertakings and travels, equipping themselves. Yet this leads to no result. Rinus Van de Velde’s protagonists arrive nowhere, achieve nothing. We look at them failing, accompany them on an expedition, through an adventure, into the studio or just into the hotel lift, and, with considerable delight, we lose all sense of orientation in Rinus Van de Velde’s detail-rich interiors.