Patrick Verelst

Patrick Verelst °1948 Antwerp, Belgium

Patrick Verelst is both an in- and outsider of the art world. He has been working in the gallery circuit as assistant or gallery owner. Today he is a private dealer. Only to an intimate circle he is also know as a painter.

He worked as gallery assistant for Wide White Space Gallery in Antwerp, John Weber Gallery in New York, and — together with Marc Poirier dit Caulier— ran the Gallery Patrick Verelst – Marc Poirier dit Caulier Gallery in Antwerp. 
In the 80ies he moved to New York working as assistant at the John Weber and Leo Castelli Gallery. He returned to Antwerp to reopen a gallery with exhibitions of Julian Schnabel, Keith Haring, Ronnie Cutrone, Jonathan Lasker, Walter Swennen and others.

In the early eighties few works were sporadically included in shows at Isy Brachot, Brussels, Montevideo, Antwerp, Olsen Gallery New York, Museum d’Hondt Dhaenens, Deurle and ICC Antwerp.

Patrick Verelst has always continued painting, but destroyed most of the works by force of habit. It was the correspondence between him and Jasper Johns that convinced him to keep some of his paintings, as the latter persuaded him not to destroy them anymore. For years his paintings have never seen an audience, but in memory of his friendship with Marc Poirier dit Caulier he has now decided to exhibit them, but to openly invite viewers to a lesser-known side of his practice.