Koen van den Broek
ART SG 2024 | Booth FC19
Koen van den Broek
The Del, Yellow, 2014
Oil on canvas
50 x 75 cm
Photographs taken during his travels serve van den Broek as a starting point for his paintings. He focuses on details in city and country views that normally do not catch the eye or attract attention: Van den Broek captures architectural elements in urban design as well as rural areas, that mark traces of human intervention. Zooming in on curbs, the pavement and street corners, the artist deliberately chooses insignificant details as the subject of his works.
The Del, Yellow, 2014
Detail
By allowing hardly any narrative elements, van den Broek directs the viewer’s gaze to the painterly aspects of his works – the choice of color, the brushstroke, the painted space versus the flatness of the canvas, and the composition, which, due to its genesis, refers to a specific moment and is significantly influenced by the photographic perspective.
Thus, the artist also plays with the relationship between figuration and abstraction. Many of the works seem like abstract paintings, but they are almost always direct representations of his photographic originals, which are in turn representations of reality.
Old Woman Springs Rd, 2023
Oil on canvas, 180 x 135 cm
Despite the recurring theme of rural and urban views, van den Broek’s works are less to be understood as studies of man’s architectural traces but rather as a self-reflexive examination of the genre of painting with reference to photography.
L.A. Airport, 2018
Oil on canvas, 80 x 110 cm
Koen van den Broek (*1973 in Bree, Belgium, lives and works in Antwerp) graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Previously, he had studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Breda and at the HISK in Antwerp. He enjoys a successful international career and has been active for more than 20 years.
Recently, the renowned art historian John C. Welchmann published Koen van den Broek. Out of Place by renowned art historian John C. Welchmann, which provides a detailed insight into van den Broek’s artistic work from its beginnings in the 1990s to the present day.
