Koen van den Broek – Out of Place

Between last summer 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.

At the finissage on Sunday, March 24, Prof. Dr. John C. Welchman will deliver a lecture on Koen van den Broek and the recently published monograph ‘Out of Place’ in the auditorium of the M HKA. Following the lecture, there will be a signing session with the artist and author.