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Koen van den Broek
Koen van den Broek’s paintings examine our experience of landscape, from close-up views of bleak urban corners to huge, empty swathes of countryside. The paintings combine sensual abstraction with precise figuration to create paintings of arresting, cinematic power.
Primarily derived from tightly composed, colourful photographs, his works often feature seemingly mundane architectural motifs, such as the kerb of a road, the grid on a sidewalk or the stop barriers of a parking lot. Using his own photographs as a starting point, van den Broek evolves a clear, stripped down, painterly language, using sober, neutral colours punctuated by the occasional instance of midnight blue, blood red, bright orange or pitchy black. San Luis Potosi (2003), for instance, depicts a truck parked in a lot, but the truck itself is pushed to the outer edge of the picture, the great expanse of ground becoming the real subject, with sinister dark shadows like black liquid seeping over the canvas surface.
The ongoing series of ‘Border’ paintings emphasise the function of the canvas as a container, presenting a cropped and arranged view of a much larger subject. The compositions are dynamic and the light often cold and unrelenting, with harsh shadows accentuating even the flimsiest of structures such as the metal struts of a road sign or an upright cylinder of a trash can in Blue Border and Grid #2 (2004). Van den Broek frequently travels through America, and its culture of driving, as well as the expansiveness of its landscape enter into his work. Van den Broek's work invests our sense of looking with renewed energy, opening up to the viewer the experience of a small, overlooked corner of the world, or a sublime vista as if viewed from behind the windscreen of a car.
Koen van den Broek was born in 1973 in Bree, Belgium, and lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Recent solo exhibitions include Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (2005) and Domus Artium, Salamanca (2004). His work has featured in group exhibitions including the Prague Biennale (2005), Kunsthalle Mannheim (2004) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2003).
More on Koen van den Broek
| Artworks | |
 | I 4 Images |
 | II 4 Images |
 | III 4 Images |
 | IV 4 Images |
 | V 4 Images |
 | VI 3 Images |
 | VII 4 Images |
 | VIII 4 Images |
 | Related Texts |
| CV | |
| Bibliography | |
| Text by Jennifer Higgie | |
| Exhibitions | |
| Angle 2 Feb—10 Mar 2007 | |
| Threshold 11 Dec—17 Jan 2004 | |
| Borders 28 Nov—12 Jan 2002 | |
| Artist's Publications Available in the Bookshop |
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| Koen van den Broek 2003 | |
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