Past exhibition

KOEN VAN DEN BROEK – Of(f) Road

25.02.2024 – 21.04.2024

Whether curbs, bridge pillars or empty streets: the Belgian artist Koen van den Broek (born 1973) makes the urban present the subject of his paintings and sketches. He moves with ease along the boundaries between abstraction and representation of reality.

Van den Broek first studied architecture at the Royal Academy of Antwerp in the late 1990s, then switched to painting and completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Breda. Architecture, construction, lines of flight and perspective lines of sight are recurring themes in his image creations.

Koen van den Broek finds his inspiration primarily through the photos he takes on road trips, mainly through the USA. These already focus on details and sections that often appear puzzling. Removed from their original context, his motifs develop a life of their own. As if by themselves, his paintings zoom in on these details, arrange and compose colors, light and shadows and increase the colors in an expressive style. This leads him to ambivalent compositions that only supposedly reflect reality, but can be read more abstractly. Playfulness, diversity and duality – rigid boundaries versus wild brushstrokes, depth versus surface – are characteristic of his painting.

The exhibition is a co-production with the Magdeburg Art Museum and shows a cross-section of Koen van den Broek’s painterly work from 1998 to the present. For the first time, the painter’s work, which he has created over 25 years, will be on display in its entirety in the two German art museums.