Exhibition Information

			Space ISU, the cultural art space of ISU Group, presents the artist Rinus Van de Velde’s solo exhibition, I Want to Eat Mangos in the Bathtub. The exhibition runs from March 8 to May 10. I Want to Eat Mangos in the Bathtubis an exhibition that focuses on the art of Rinus Van de Velde (b. 1983), a Belgian artist who has explored cyclical narratives in imaginary, real, and parallel universes through various genres including painting, installation, sculpture, and video. In his solo exhibition at Space ISU and Art Sonje Center, Van de Velde uses imagined travels and fictional encounters with figures from art history to share stories of thrilling adventure and artistic exploration. In addition to the charcoal drawings for which he is best known, the exhibition also shares new creations in oil pastels and colored pencils, while focusing on major recent works that have seen him expanding into video, sculpture, and installation media. In particular, it is an opportunity to see his recent work rooted in fictional autobiography, where the artist seems to become one of the Pleinairisme practitioners of the early 20th century who sought to depict nature underneath the rays of the sun. Van de Velde’s work opens up a new, multifaceted perspective on life and art through the tensions that arise from collisions between the imaginary and actual, the fake and the real, and art and language, which generate tensions and blur the boundaries separating them. His solo exhibition is an attempt to join in his exploration of parallel universes and see how far the power of endless imagination can take us.

Rinus Van de Velde (1983, Belgium) explores circular narratives in virtual, actual and parallel universes by encompassing paintings, installations, sculptures and videos. He builds a unique artistic universe in each work based on primary historical sources such as photographs taken or collected by himself, images clipped from the media, and documentation of historical figures. In particular, the work in which a character with a similar appearance to the artist attracts the concepts of doppelgänger and parallel universe to his artistic practice and finds the expandability of paintings. His work features a structure of a combination of upper images and lower texts that seems to borrow classical media layouts such as newspaper. By borrowing this traditional layout, he encourages audience to reconsider reality of the situations which the artist describes in his paintings and to continuously infer an allegory between the image and the text.

Space ISU is dedicated to presenting new ways of seeing art and everyday life. Launched in 2020 in the refurbished lobby of the ISU Group headquarters, Space ISU was planned as part of an effort by ISU Group to give back to society through the sponsorship of art and culture. Space ISU, designed as an open space in the heart of the city, provides an opportunity for anyone to experience and interact with contemporary art. Space ISU is dedicated to showcasing a variety of arts and culture contents from contemporary art to design, furniture, fashion, and lifestyle products in an effort to explore various possibilities for expanding the experience of art in our lives. Going beyond ‘art for art’s sake,’ Space ISU seeks to present new approaches to consider the relationship between art and life.

(Source = space isu)