Koen van den Broek (born 1973) is a Belgian artist who lives and works in Antwerp and Seoul, South Korea.
Van den Broek was acquainted with John Baldessari when he went to Los Angeles, not long after his stay at the post-graduate program of the HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts) in Antwerp in 2001.
In this monography, as well as in the exhibition a broad overview was given of van den Broek's career uptil that point, and this helped him to draw "…new conclusions from my older work and this gave me the energy to keep on developing my familiar motives of the urban landscape and how this can be translated in new ways onto the canvas.
"[4] The work of van den Broek is characterized thematically by the way in which it treats the (mainly American and Asian) landscape, starting more and more from an abstract language.
In "The blinding of photography" Dirk Lauwaert points out that: "… in every image, the painter [van den Broek] marks out his place with razor-sharp precision".
Their subject however, according to art historian David Anfam, seems to be something else: "… the hoary modernist process of abstracting from observation has gone awry.
Recently, in a series of new exhibitions (Chicane at Marlborough Contemporary London, Yaw at Galerie Greta Meert Brussels, Apex at Friedman Benda Gallery New York, Zylon at Gallery Baton in Seoul, Armco at Figge von Rosen Galerie in Cologne and Cut Away The Snoopy at Marlborough Contemporary in London) this graphic character has been carried further, into a direction that seems to move away from its basis in reality.