PRELUDE brings together 14 new paintings from 2024 by Hans Vandekerckhove. At the same time, it is also a prelude to the larger presentation of paintings planned for the gallery in the autumn and in the meantime titled : Do Trees have Dreams?
Trees play a prominent role in Hans Vandekerckhove's work. As part of the forest, but equally as a solitary ‘character’. In the 2016 painting in which Vandekerckhove appears to have painted a tree whisperer, he questions whether trees dream. This work, depicted in the recent monograph ‘Silence is a Message’(2024) came into the possession of his close friends ‘Paul&Magda’ whose animated garden was a source of inspiration for more than two decades.
When Paul died in 2023, he left a legacy of green imagination, a park garden to get lost in and trees that keep rooting deeper. Hans painted this garden, the pond, the trees as a tribute to his erudite and enterprising friend Paul Geerts whose motto was ‘il faut cultiver notre jardin’.
While these paintings were being created, Christina, Hans's wife, provided flower bouquets in the studio. Painted like jewels against a dark background, they are a kind of mini Hortus Conclusus depicting Paul&Magda's beautiful park garden within the confined framework of the painting studio. Paintings like spring in slow-motion.