Peter Depelchin (°Ostend, ’85) grew up at the Belgian seaside, spent some years in Italy and New York and nowadays lives in Brussels. His artwork witnesses of these experiences and his trajectory has been characterized by an intense alternation of work, research, residencies, and exhibitions.

 

Though mastering a large variety of media – including printmaking, video art or installation – drawing makes up the core of Depelchin’s artistic process. Large pencil drawings on assembled sheets of paper formally refer to the siparium, a painted curtain stretched on the back scene of the Roman theatre. These monumental artworks evoke mystic cults and ancient rites that seem to be set in a long-lost past. Hence, the artist sheds new contemporary light on Greek tragedy and Dionysian mysteries in the present context of scientific discoveries and cosmological imagery. Joining these apparent anachronical elements evokes inevitably a certain timelessness. In Peter’s work, the astrophysical elements, his thorough use of patterns and his eclectic approaches to the depiction of space, provide a more abstract imagery. They are stirred with his archetypical, allegorical, and theatrical approach of both iconography and historical imagery. Large pencil drawings emerge simultaneously with Peter’s ink drawings - often used to finalize artistic projects - while mixed media on paper encourages him to a more instinctive approach. It is through his tiny drawings and his studies, though, that Peter creates innumerable layers of significance. In addition to that, Depelchin’s use of friends and family as models in his drawings is a direct proof of his art being on the crossroad between past and future and pushes the spectator to dream, to wonder, to personify and to question.

Peter’s artistic cosmogony embodies an organic processing of artworks, which permits him to (re)consider leitmotivs, thus stimulating auto-reference and reflection. The rhythm these motives imply, drives him to accomplish a new universal artistic language in correlation to the contemporary world. To this end, he decontextualizes and neo-contextualizes formal characteristics of aesthetics such as perspective and patterning, art-historically embedded allegory, and iconography, he reinterprets mythology and literature to form a new inseparable and unexpected combo with astrophysical discoveries and contemporary portraiture.  

 

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Peter Depelchin has been busy on the national and international art scene, with residencies in The Netherlands (Stichting IK, Vlissingen ’08-‘09), in Italy (Academia Belgica, Rome ’14-‘15), in the USA (Residency Unlimited, New York, ’15-‘16) and in Belgium (TAMAT, Tournai ’22). These residencies led to exhibitions in The Netherlands (Neugebau, Pieter Janszoon Saenredam project, Gegoten Lood), in Rome (MAXXI) and in New York (Incube Arts, Offspace, Arts on Site, outside in, Brilliant Champions Gallery). Among other events, he was invited to exhibit in Brussels (Kasteel van Gaasbeek, La Vallée) and in London (Young Masters). In 2023, two solo shows will take place at the Chateau Thozée (May-June) and at the Museum Félicien Rops in Namur (May-Sept.). Peter was awarded Drawing and Contemporary art prizes in several national art competitions, among which Input-Output (Bruges, 2007), Grote Prijs Ernest Albert voor Tekenkunst (Mechelen, 2016) and the Prix Elisabeth Burdot (Brussels, 2022).  During his artistic career he worked with several galleries (Galerie Jan Colle, Ghent / S&H De Buck, Ghent / Light Cube Gallery, Ronse / Nathalia Tsala Gallery, Brussels / Brilliant Champions Gallery, New York / Fou Gallery, New York) and continues working with new galleries (Husk Gallery, Brussels).