Stefaan De Croock (1982), alias Strook, is a Belgian contemporary artist. He mastered in fine arts at Sint-Lucas in Ghent. In 2011, he became a full-time artist. He has been expanding his boundaries ever since, both literally and figuratively as galleries in Stockholm, Miami, Bangkok, Montreal and Mexico City picked up and lauded his ever more layered and meaningful collages, sculptures, installations and paintings.

The central theme of his oeuvre can be distilled to ‘time’, a given that has always inspired Strook. This is noticeable in his chosen raw work material: ‘old’ wood, which he finds at what he calls ‘non-places’: desolate, eerie locations where humans once intervened but that were left ruined. In doing so, the artist grants these objects a return to the human timeline and connects their past with a new future, location and purpose.