DO TREES HAVE DREAMS? / HANS VANDEKERCKHOVE
13 Sep - 02 Nov 2025
HANS VANDEKERCKHOVE, Ando’s Door 1, 2025, oil on canvas, 150 x 170 cm, unique / Courtesy of Hans Vandekerckhove & TATJANA PIETERS, Ghent.
HANS VANDEKERCKHOVE, Middle Earth, 2025, oil on canvas, 170 x 170 cm, unique / Courtesy of Hans Vandekerckhove & TATJANA PIETERS, Ghent.
TATJANA PIETERS is pleased to welcome you to “Do Trees Have Dreams?” — the fifth solo exhibition of Hans Vandekerckhove at the gallery. The exhibition already had an announcement in March this year with an intimate presentation of the ‘Christina's Flowers’ series. Nature plays a prominent role in Hans Vandekerckhove's practice: the artist often depicts trees as a forest, representing the greater whole or community, but also as a solitary character.
"'Do Trees have Dreams?' is a poetic question that revels in the mysterious connection between reality and fantasy.
Together, tree and dream form a cycle.
Trees: in their tops the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity.
Dreams: in their tops rustles the infinite, their roots rest in the world.
Both send messages from the depths and dissolve into the ethereal.
From the trees in Ghent's Baudelo Park, the dying sunflowers in Ardooie and the magical water levels in Veltem, Giverny and Insel Hombroich, across the flowering orchards of the Pindos Mountains and the Vikos Gorge in Greece to the graphic fairytale of Middle-Earth and the psychedelic flower fields of Tomorrowland.
Everywhere, reality and dream merge into a vision that makes the vast and eternal visible.
It means nothing, it exhorts nothing;
It means everything, it means the secret of being.
It is beautiful, it is happiness, is meaning, is a gift and a discovery for the viewer"
- Hans Vandekerckhove.
Hans Vandekerckhove is a painter pur sang and focuses on motifs with a deep-rooted tradition in Western visual art: the Rückenfigur, the gardener, the garden and horticulture, greenhouses, bridges and related architectural motifs, the Hieronymus motif, the girl figure, the romantic landscape, the totem animal, the sacra conversation and the annunciation motif. He is a romantic and individualist who evolved from a neo-expressionist style (early 1980s) to a quasi-abstract image inspired by alchemical motifs (1990s) and then, from 1998 onwards, returned to figuration and substantive themes. Vandekerckhove focuses on the pictorial relationship between motif and background and people and environment.
Hans Vandekerckhove (BE, 1957) lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. In his more than 30-year career, Vandekerckhove has had exhibitions in both galleries and museums, including Mu.ZEE, Ostend (BE), SMAK, Ghent (BE), Art4Museum, Moscow (RU), MKM Duisburg (DE), Fundación Ambéres, Madrid (ES), Museum Xanten (DE) and Musée Rolin, Autun (FR). His work can be found in the collections of Mu.ZEE Ostend (BE), the Flemish Government (BE), The Phoebus Foundation (BE) and Museum Minden (DE), among others, as well as private collections worldwide.
'Silence is a Message,' the 4th monograph on Vandekerckhove's practice is available in the gallery.
In addition, during the exhibition we will offer a premiere of Juul Vandevelde's film document following the book.
"'Do Trees have Dreams?' is a poetic question that revels in the mysterious connection between reality and fantasy.
Together, tree and dream form a cycle.
Trees: in their tops the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity.
Dreams: in their tops rustles the infinite, their roots rest in the world.
Both send messages from the depths and dissolve into the ethereal.
From the trees in Ghent's Baudelo Park, the dying sunflowers in Ardooie and the magical water levels in Veltem, Giverny and Insel Hombroich, across the flowering orchards of the Pindos Mountains and the Vikos Gorge in Greece to the graphic fairytale of Middle-Earth and the psychedelic flower fields of Tomorrowland.
Everywhere, reality and dream merge into a vision that makes the vast and eternal visible.
It means nothing, it exhorts nothing;
It means everything, it means the secret of being.
It is beautiful, it is happiness, is meaning, is a gift and a discovery for the viewer"
- Hans Vandekerckhove.
Hans Vandekerckhove is a painter pur sang and focuses on motifs with a deep-rooted tradition in Western visual art: the Rückenfigur, the gardener, the garden and horticulture, greenhouses, bridges and related architectural motifs, the Hieronymus motif, the girl figure, the romantic landscape, the totem animal, the sacra conversation and the annunciation motif. He is a romantic and individualist who evolved from a neo-expressionist style (early 1980s) to a quasi-abstract image inspired by alchemical motifs (1990s) and then, from 1998 onwards, returned to figuration and substantive themes. Vandekerckhove focuses on the pictorial relationship between motif and background and people and environment.
Hans Vandekerckhove (BE, 1957) lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. In his more than 30-year career, Vandekerckhove has had exhibitions in both galleries and museums, including Mu.ZEE, Ostend (BE), SMAK, Ghent (BE), Art4Museum, Moscow (RU), MKM Duisburg (DE), Fundación Ambéres, Madrid (ES), Museum Xanten (DE) and Musée Rolin, Autun (FR). His work can be found in the collections of Mu.ZEE Ostend (BE), the Flemish Government (BE), The Phoebus Foundation (BE) and Museum Minden (DE), among others, as well as private collections worldwide.
'Silence is a Message,' the 4th monograph on Vandekerckhove's practice is available in the gallery.
In addition, during the exhibition we will offer a premiere of Juul Vandevelde's film document following the book.