About
Stefaan Rits (Roeselare, 1984) is a Belgian visual artist and writer.
His work emerges from a sustained interest in the ways people create meaning within their surroundings and how that meaning is transmitted, transformed, forgotten, or preserved over time. Through paintings, drawings and texts, he explores the stories that reside within objects, images, landscapes, people and cultural practices.
Rits grew up in West Flanders, a region where history remains visibly embedded in the landscape. The many traces of what has disappeared, as well as what has endured, awakened an early fascination with the ways cultures emerge, evolve and are passed on. What have we gained, and what have we lost? This question has accompanied him since childhood. Everything that is left behind makes way for something new, but how does new culture come into being? And when something disappears, what is lost that was worth preserving? This curiosity remains a central driving force within his artistic practice.
During his training in decorative painting and restoration, he became acquainted with historical painting and decorative techniques. He also attended supplementary art courses at the SASK Academy of Art in Roeselare. He later pursued an independent course of study in literature, art history, culture and heritage. His development was therefore shaped not only through formal education, but equally through self-directed study, reading, museum visits and long-term research.
His work draws upon a wide range of sources. A painting may originate from an encounter, an old photograph, an archival document, a walk, a conversation, a book, or a place that continues to raise questions. In the same way, texts may evolve into drawings or paintings. These disciplines do not function separately but form part of a continuous practice in which observing, reading, researching, writing and making images constantly intersect.
Recurring themes in his work include cultural memory, identity, landscape, heritage, and the relationship between past and present. His attention is directed not only towards significant events or well-known figures, but equally towards modest stories, everyday objects and seemingly insignificant details through which broader cultural developments become visible. For Rits, cultural value is found not only in monuments or official histories, but also in that which risks disappearing when no one pays attention to it any longer.
Alongside his visual practice, he writes poetry, essays, observations and stories. Both his publications and artworks are rooted in the same conviction: that attention is a form of preservation, and that meaning often lies hidden within what passes unnoticed by the contemporary eye.
Stefaan Rits lives and works in Houthulst.
Attention is a form of preservation. — Stefaan Rits