Between the summer of 2023 and the publication of the monograph 'Out of Place' in November 2023, there was a landslide in Koen van den Broek's artistic evolution. This extensive publication, accompanied by an equally voluminous text by Prof. Dr. John C. Welchman (University of California, San Diego), guides the reader through the twenty-five-year career of painter Koen van den Broek. At the core of Van den Broek's practice is the translation of his own photographic originals into oil paint on canvas, to the extent that the resulting paintings and the re-captured photographs are at times scarcely distinguishable. A distinctive aspect of Van den Broek's work is his photographic gaze, which explores shadows and perspective, often adopting a bird's-eye view to scrutinize humankind's influence on the landscape.

Since the summer, however, Koen van den Broek appears to have been bending or breaking this very ground rule. No longer confined to translating the artist's framed reality onto canvas, he now directly engages with the raw canvas, using materials reminiscent of street workers—tar, asphalt, and traffic paint. In this sense, the newly created works may not seamlessly fit into the pages of the recently published monograph, but they retain a distinctive essence that is unmistakably Van den Broek's.

SELECTED WORKS (in chronological order)

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

‘What’s the Story’
August 16 – November 17, 2024
OPENING Thursday August 15, 7–10 pm
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp (BE)

‘Blue Highway’
August 24 – October 12, 2024
OPENING Saturday August 24, 6–9 pm
de boer Gallery, Los Angeles (US)

‘Streetspace Banger’
August 24 – November 10, 2024
Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Recklinghausen (DE)

‘Near and Far - Local Perspectives, Global Visions’
Herman Gommé and Jef Van Eynde
curated by Koen van den Broek
September 20–22, 2024
OPENING Thursday 19 September, 7–9 pm
Studio Koen van den Broek, Antwerp (BE)

Solo exhibition
Greta Meert, Brussels (BE)
November 2024

COMPLETE ARCHIVE OF WORK

synthesis.pdf