Seeing The Unseeing: Rinus Van de Velde Explores Meaning-Making at Interisland Terminal's Inaugural Exhibition

Rinus Van de Velde is the kind of artist that writers can't get enough of, simply because there is so much to say. His work packs the double punch of being both visually interesting and conceptually rigorous. The primary outlet of his work, drawing, is a daily routine for Van de Velde, who uses an extensive personal archive of photographic clippings from old issues of National Geographic, film stills and internet sources to recreate the images in dark charcoal on white paper. The drawings couple these appropriated images with mismatched text, forming new meaning through context. For his recent exhibition in Honolulu curated by Wei Fang of Interisland Terminal, Van de Velde created a group of drawings that together coalesced around the theme of the unseen.

Van de Velde's frequent use of National Geographic magazine images, favoring ethnographic snapshots from the 1950s and 60s, creates an easy link to postcolonial discourse. However, the drawings chosen for Interisland Terminal's exhibition (unexpectedly, considering the Hawaii location), speak more to a playful investigation of semiotics through verbal/visual mashup.

The drawings, although varied in subject matter and text, all seem to be on some level preoccupied with the theme of seeing the unseen. In Another Exercise in Solitude, a watery cloud of a dozen pairs of swimming flippers loom above the viewer, water surface hiding the figures heads. It is only the most foreground figure who, head resting below the surface, looks down towards darkness. I Take It All Back. Who Sees It Anyway (Forget The Background) depicts a loose line of smooth black rocks receding into the distance, becoming gradually smaller and less perceptible. The text mocks the viewer, asking "who sees it." Who sees what?

Through their lack of singular meaning, the drawings themselves serve as proof of the frailty of visual description and the corresponding pliability of text. Van de Velde's sketchy strokes of charcoal, effective visual descriptors without being overly exact, serve to further remind the viewer of the presence of the artist within the work: if the artist is the meaning-maker, his intentions are left intentionally vague.

RVDV: HI, Drawings by Rinus Van de Velde, was on exhibit at Interisland Terminal's temporary gallery space in Kamuki from July 16 through July 26, 2009.