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Gerolf Van de Perre |
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“At the turn of the century I changed tracks: in my artistic work. I now also wanted to integrate the painted descriptions of my direct surroundings into a story line. Simultaneously those surroundings changed drastically: I moved from Ghent, Belgium, to Beijing, China. That's how I changed perspectives in my work."
This is what Gerolf Van de Perre writes in his introduction to Stone Dust (in Dutch: Steenstof, published by Oogachtend, 2003: http://www.oogachtend.be/vandeperre.htmI. Stone Dust indeed is the result of that "change in tracks": the paintings of the modern as well as the dilapidated streets of China's metropolises, his immediate surroundings at that time, merged into a story about aspects of contemporary Chinese society.
Earlier on, inspiration for his oil paintings mainly organised in his house; his motives were the incoming light through doors and windows. That interest for (filtered) light in interiors was already the subject of his dissertation while finishing his education at St. Lucas Art School in Ghent [Belgium), where he specialised in oil painting. Oil painting still is the discipline he currently teaches at that academy.
While doors and windows were prominently present in his early paintings, the meaning reversed when Gerolf took place behind the window of his Beijing apartment in order to keep a diary of what was happening on the other side: destruction and construction, in quick alternation, of what evolved from a traditional neighbourhood to a shiny highrise. That was a way of documenting the impressive urban developments in contemporary China. As these developments are not only visual but have huge impacts on the lives of ordinary people, he continued to dig even deeper into that theme in his story Stone Dust.
Back in Belgium since 2002, Gerolf has published another graphic novel. 13 Happiness Street (Domweg dapper in de Gelukstraat published in 2003 as issue number 23 of the magazine for Chinese literature in Dutch translation Her trage vuur) I based on a novel by the Chinese writer Bei Dao. He is currently finishing the sequel to Stone Dust while work¬ing on bigger oil paintings and once in a while illustrations for other publications.
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