STARLIGHT SHINE

The textile pavilion - created for WONDER - integrates all the characteristics inherent in Verhelst's work. From its digital canvas, the installation invites viewers to experience a physical, immersive journey that unfolds the “process of a car wash” through the lens of the “TRIPPY VEGAS” universe.

As you move through the installation, you are surrounded by intricately crafted tapestries, each produced in collaboration with leading Belgian textile manufacturing companies, using leftover yarn from their production. The walls, floors and various elements are not simply surfaces, but narrative layers, each representing a different stage of the transformation process - from the initial “cleaning” to the final “polishing.”

With “STARLIGHT SHINE,” the juxtaposition of digital elements and tactual craftsmanship challenges you to see both technology and tradition in a new light.

Victor Verhelst (°1997, BE) is a visual artist.

Rooted in graphic arts and the craft of textile art, Victor Verhelst’s oeuvre weaves a diverse array of mediums into his autonomous creations. His artistic journey flows seamlessly from the digital realm to the tactual of in the physical world, manifesting in unique Riso prints, voluminous tapestries, and interactive game technology. At the heart of his work lies the ongoing series ‘TRIPPY VEGAS,’ a vibrant, evolving digital cityscape where virtual architecture, human interactions, and imaginative structures merge into a new, surreal fiction.

Verhelst’s aesthetic is a dance of distortion and juxtaposition, where 2D and 3D images collide and blend, creating striking figurative compositions. Printed matter - whether digital, 3D, Riso, or textile - explore the delicate relationship between the materiality and the pre-existing digital image, breathing life into the digital depiction and infusing it with a tangible, multi-dimensional presence.