Dining with Art History in the Texas Desert: Rinus Van de Velde’s “The Dinner” Exhibition at Hetzler Marfa

In the middle of the Texas desert, in the city of Marfa where silence reigns, living and departed legends of art history meet at a fictional dinner. Belgian artist Rinus Van de Velde’s exhibition “The Dinner,” running at Hetzler | Marfa until December 6, 2026, presents the artist’s most comprehensive US selection to date through oil pastel works, massive charcoal canvases, cardboard sculptures, and films.

Constructing imaginary autobiographies without leaving his studio, Van de Velde invites the viewer this time to a gallery dinner that never actually took place, yet whose every trace remains left behind. Considered the keystone of the exhibition, Everything that remains will be unintended sculptures depicts an abandoned table in the middle of a pitch-black meadow. Filled with flower vases, champagne bottles, and melting candles, this table tips its hat to Daniel Spoerri’s arrangements transforming food leftovers into sculptures, while the cardboard sculpture titled The dinner right beside it waits endlessly for its guests with its empty chairs.

Striking full harmony with Marfa’s desolate geography, on the canvases we witness the guests’ adventures arriving at the dinner: those rowing through turbulent waters, riding horses like a Texas cowboy, or getting caught in ivy at the door… The cardboard sculpture I’ll take one more dive, David, preparing to jump into David Hockney’s famous pool, along with references to Albert Oehlen, Maurizio Cattelan, and Rodney Graham, reinforces the idea of “armchair travel” in Van de Velde’s mind.

The exhibition’s most striking moment is the charcoal painting standing like a giant shadow on the wall, Bill, Bob, Alice, …. Referencing the iconic courtroom scene in the movie The Godfather Part II, in this black-and-white composition Van de Velde addresses giant names of art history in a conference hall. Meanwhile, the videos La Ruta Natural and A Life in a Day, which he shot in his studio, completely eliminate the boundaries between fictional selves and studio reality.