10 may 2021, Flor Linckens
BALLROOM #3: Galerie Ron Mandos
The third edition of the Ballroom Project art fair will take place during Antwerp Art Weekend (from 12 to 16 May) and includes 20 galleries from the Netherlands and Belgium. The Amsterdam-based Galerie Ron Mandos will show work by the Belgian artist Koen van den Broek.
The cinematic work of Koen van den Broek resonates particularly well in our current context: a period that was, until recently, marked by empty streets and the keenly felt absence of people. Yet this emptiness has been characteristic of the oeuvre of the Belgian artist for years. He is known for transforming fleeting photographs into semi-abstract paintings. For a series of new works, on show during Ballroom Project, Van den Broek delved into his archive from the early noughties, which consists of thousands of analogue photos that were taken during the early morning hours in New York City and Los Angeles. Photos that show art deco buildings as well as old window signs. These photographs are rarely thought-out in advance. Instead, these quick snapshots serve as a sort of visual sketchbook.
Koen van den Broek, Warehouse, 2020, Galerie Ron Mandos.
The deserted landscapes and cityscapes in his paintings are the result of a process of abstraction, based on large quantities of photos — sometimes as many as four thousand per trip. Van den Broek's practice is aimed at translating these photos into an analytical, stripped-down and painted image. In his studio in Belgium, the artist uses these photos as a starting point for his paintings, that balance on the boundary between abstraction and realism. They are often executed in a characteristic colour palette. Van den Broek: “I started translating the photos I took in America in Belgium, where things are always gray and depressing. That way, it becomes a truly autonomous image, for which I focus on composition, light and atmosphere. I am fascinated by spatiality, in its relation with human beings. A person needs freedom, but also requires and prefers a safe state of being.”
Koen van den Broek, Central LA, 2020, Galerie Ron Mandos.
Van den Broek has been fascinated by the US landscape for years. Not because of the unanimously loved nature reserves - from the Grand Canyon to Yosemite - but rather because of the banal details that define the streets: seemingly invisible and often unsightly elements such as curbs, the sides of houses, viaducts, a guardrail, garages and cracks in the asphalt. Van den Broek isolates these details, noting that the scale is incomparable to what we’re familiar with in Northern Europe. Van den Broek: “Such details are much larger than what we see here. A curb would sometimes remind me of minimal art, of a Donald Judd that was just lying there on the street.” The artist then frames these images in unexpected ways, for example by abruptly cutting off a seemingly endless horizon on the open road, as if you, as a viewer, only have to look up to see it. Van den Broek omits details, so that geometric lines end up determining the image. “I will just cut off the beautiful view."
When Van den Broek speaks about his inspiration, he is often talking about film, European and American art history, plus modern and contemporary architecture. In his work, certain connections can be discovered, connections that link his work to films by Lynch, Wenders, Hitchcock, Haneke and Tarantino. Van den Broek is also inspired by the work of a multitude of artists, including Hopper, Matisse, Mondrian, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Da Vinci, Velásquez and Judd. His practice is roughly rooted in European art history up to the 1950s and American art history from that period onwards: from minimalism to geometric abstraction.
Koen van den Broek, Red Lines, 2020, Galerie Ron Mandos.
Van den Broek's work has been included in various collections, including the collection of the LACMA, the SFMoMA, SMAK, M HKA, the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris and the Busan Museum of Art. Van den Broek studied architecture at KU Leuven and obtained degrees at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the Sint-Joost and the HISK (Higher Institute of Fine Arts). Shortly after that, the painter moved to Los Angeles, and later to New York. During this period, he befriended the famous conceptual artist John Baldessari. After being acquainted for seven years, they even collaborated on a project. In 2003, Van den Broek's work was shown in the exhibition "Matisse and beyond: a century of modernism" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA). In that same year, Van den Broek destroyed three hundred of his works, inspired by Baldessari, because it offered him much needed creative space and headspace. After a few years, Van den Broek moved back to Belgium, but he still repeats the aimless road trips - that provide him with so much inspiration - on a yearly basis, in addition to various trips through Europe, Mexico and Japan.
