b. 1973 in Bree, Belgium

Lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium

In his painterly exploration of urban details such a cracks on the road, Belgian painter Koen van den Broek develops an ambiguous kind of representation. Looking down at the asphalt and often using photographs as references, his paintings operate by zooming in on their subjects, eventually leading the painter towards abstraction. His work shows traces of human presence: circus tents, highways, bridges, sewers, pipes, fragments of houses or cars. The artist seeks out anonymity, the general rather than the specific. This relationship vis-à-vis photography is essential to his work. Playfulness, diversity and duality – rigid delineation versus wild brush strokes, depth versus surface – are all characteristic of his work. Koen Van den Broek questions the viewing schemes of photography. His paintings are anti-images, reactions against the recordings of the camera.

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