The genuine, unique perspectives and range of perceptual possibilities in paintings by Koen van den Broek (*1973 in Bree, Belgium) are captivating. The artist roams the surfaces of the world with his eyes, finding visual inspiration at the peripheries of the city and in insignificant façades, empty highways, closed garages, lofty viaduct pillars, and desolate curbsides. Using his own photographic diaries of trips throughout America, Asia, and Europe as source material, van den Broek turns layered visual experience into compelling oil paintings on canvas. While the compositions are vaguely familiar, brushstroke and paint texture create, imagine, and invent new realities. This publication presents the conflation of two exemplary projects: monumentally paintings from the Insomnia cycle, painted in Antwerp, and a smaller, intimately nuanced series of Greenhouse paintings, created by the artist during a residency in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.
 
Exhibition schedule: Friedman Benda, New York, April 25–May 24, 2013 | And further venues