Peter Depelchin (°Ostend, '85) grew up on the Belgian coast, spent several years in Italy (Rome), the USA (NY) and Brussels, and now lives in New York City. His work bears witness to these experiences and his career has been characterized by an intense alternation between work, research, residencies and exhibitions.

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Although he works in a variety of media - including printmaking, video art and installation - drawing is at the core of Depelchin's artistic process. Large pencil drawings on mounted sheets of paper formally reference the siparium, a painted curtain stretched across the backdrop of a Roman theatre. These monumental works evoke mystical cults and ancient rites that seem to take place in a long-lost past. In this way, the artist casts a new contemporary light on Greek tragedy and Dionysian mysteries in the present context of scientific discoveries and cosmological imagery. The juxtaposition of these seemingly anachronistic elements inevitably evokes a certain timelessness. In Peter's work, the astrophysical elements, his thorough use of pattern and his eclectic approaches to the depiction of space provide a more abstract imagery. They are stimulated by his archetypal, allegorical and theatrical approach to both iconography and historical imagery. Large pencil drawings are created alongside Peter's ink drawings - often used to finalize artistic projects - while mixed media on paper encourages a more instinctive approach. However, it is through his tiny drawings and studies that Peter creates countless layers of meaning. In addition, Depelchin's use of friends and family as models in his drawings is direct evidence that his art is at the crossroads of the past and the future, encouraging the viewer to dream, wonder, personify and question.

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Peter's artistic cosmogony embodies an organic processing of artworks that allows him to (re)consider leitmotifs, thus stimulating auto-reference and reflection. The rhythm implied by these motifs drives him to create a new universal artistic language in correlation with the contemporary world. To this end, he decontextualizes and neo-contextualizes formal characteristics of aesthetics such as perspective and pattern, art-historically embedded allegory and iconography, and reinterprets mythology and literature to form a new, inseparable and unexpected combination with astrophysical discoveries and contemporary portraiture.  

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Peter Depelchin has been active on the national and international art scene with residencies in the Netherlands (Stichting IK, Vlissingen '08-'09), Italy (Academia Belgica, Rome '14-'15), the USA (Residency Unlimited, New York, '15-'16) and Belgium (TAMAT, Tournai '22). These residencies led to exhibitions in the Netherlands (Neugebau, Pieter Janszoon Saenredam project, Gegoten Lood), Rome (MAXXI) and New York (Incube Arts, Offspace, Arts on Site, outside in, Brilliant Champions Gallery, KODA-RU House). He has also been invited to exhibit in Brussels (Kasteel van Gaasbeek, La Vallée) and London (Young Masters). In 2023, Peter Depelchin realized an ambitious museum show "Hommage à Pan" on two sites:  Chateau Thozée and the Félicien Rops Museum in Namur. Peter has been awarded prizes for drawing and contemporary art in several national art competitions, including Input-Output (Bruges, 2007), Grote Prijs Ernest Albert voor Tekenkunst (Mechelen, 2016) and the Prix Elisabeth Burdot (Brussels, 2022).  During his artistic career he has worked with several galleries (Galerie Jan Colle, Ghent / S&H De Buck, Ghent / Light Cube Gallery, Ronse / Nathalia Tsala Gallery, Brussels / Brilliant Champions Gallery, New York / Fou Gallery, New York) and continues to work with new galleries (Husk Gallery, Brussels).