Philipp von Rosen — Koen Van Den Broek : Track

Berlin, Distanz, 2014 Softcover, 102pp., 28x21cm., ills. in col., new. ISBN 9783954760640. Koen van den Broek (b. 1973 in Bree, Belgium, lives and works in Antwerb) exhibits widely throughout the world, from New York to Seoul, including a major retrospective at SMAK, Ghent, in 2010. Track documents recent paintings by Koen van den Broek and represents an evolution of style for one of the most accomplished painters of his generation. The book follows a sequence of exhibitions that he has made over the past two years, which mark a significant turning point and development in the artis's practice, as he pushes all remaining figurative elements towards the field of complete abstraction. He is widely celebrated for his series of paintings inspired by unconventional perspective. On road journeys in the United States, he took hundreds of snapshots that he could later use as source material for his canvases where he would focus on one detail. These details might include a section of the road, the curb receding into the perspective of the image, or cracks in the surface, and almost always an interplay with shadows; a displaced tradition of the Flemish landscape. Today he reworks recurring features in his previous paintings, a vocabulary that continues to recombine into new compositions.