Koen van den Broek
Armco
February 1–March 29, 2014
Opening: January 31, 7–9pm
Figge von Rosen Galerie
Aachener Straße 65
50674 Cologne
T +49 221 2705 6840
F +49 221 2705 6849
On January 31, at 7pm we inaugurate the exhibition Armco by the Belgian painter Koen van den Broek (b. 1973).
For the first time in Germany we show the new body of works Koen van den Broek is working on since 2013 and which can be described as a radical shift towards abstraction.
His former paintings were based on photographs that he was taking on journeys, mainly in the USA. With these works he was examining the relation between photography and painting by pushing the figuration to the edge of abstraction. Now, the new works, which are on show in the gallery, go one step further. Instead of referring to his photographs, he rather uses the history of his own paintings as a reference point. With a computer he assembles elements of reproductions of his own paintings to digital collages like a musician samples bits and pieces of melodies to a new song. By playing around with curbs, cracks, pavements and shadows—the emblematic patterns of his paintings—van den Broek generates compositions, which open a door to a new period in his œuvre.
It is clear that he had always played with the relation of abstraction and figuration, and with the illusory spatiality of the image and the two-dimensionality of the canvas. However, even in the most reduced depictions of rather banal motives like curbs or shadows we saw an intense play with reality and its tones of light. With his newer works he goes farther in the sense that he does not use the referential quality of the pictorial elements anymore. He rather denies the relation of his paintings to reality in order to focus on the dynamic of pure painterly issues like balancing the composition, the application of the paint and the use of colors.
Koen van den Broek (b.1973) lives and works in Belgium. He has a Bachelor in Architectural Engineering, and studied at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, the Academy of Visual Arts St. Joost, Breda, and the Higher Institute of Fine Arts Flanders, Antwerp. He is currently an instructor at the MAD faculty in Hasselt, Belgium.
The artist’s work is in significant private collections and the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Astrup Fearnley Museet fur Modern Kunst, Oslo, Norway; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium; The Leeum Collection at the Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul; S.M.A.K, Ghent, Belgium, and MUHKA, Antwerp. Van den Broek has shown in many museum exhibitions in Belgium including in Antwerp, at the MAS and at the MuHKA. In 2008, van den Broek collaborated with John Baldessari on This an Example of That, an exhibition at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht. In 2009, he was the subject of an extensive retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK) at which point Crack, a monograph on his work, was published.
For more information and / or images, please contact the gallery.
