Strompelvast

When Roger Raveel expressed his dream of establishing his own museum, he also proclaimed his wish to provide a platform for both established and promising artists from home and abroad. That is why the Roger Raveel Museum regularly organizes exhibitions highlighting the work of other artists.

The museum invited Rein Dufait (1990, Ostend) to a solo presentation in the new wing of the building. The work of this artist can be characterized by a pronounced process-oriented working method in which one work generates the next. Each artwork forms a link in the poetic chain of formal and practical 'problems' for which Dufait devises a 'solution'.

Dufait creates works of art that are somewhere between sculptures, assemblages, installations and paintings. He works with the most diverse materials, from cardboard and sand to planks, metal wire, plexiglass and acrylic paint. He assembles and combines these building blocks in an intuitive way according to his own logic. The artist is inspired by structures, materials, colours and constructions that he encounters in his immediate environment.

Strompelvast brings together a series of works that were largely created in 2021 and are therefore subtly or less subtly connected. The cornerstone of this exhibition is Marine, a work from 2020 that offers a synthesis of a number of important works of art from Dufait's oeuvre. In Strompelvast, too, the artist looks back on his own creations and practice and challenges himself to try out new proportions and combinations.