Koen Broucke (Belgium, 1965) is an extremely versatile artist. Koen Broucke knows how to give shape to his unique universe through image, text and music and the result is incredibly fascinating. Alternating between reality and imagination, historical facts and fantasy, a self-written scenario in which historical figures and fictional characters is brought to life in his work. With his drawings, paintings and performances Koen Broucke has developed a magnificent but also a very distinctive personal style. Guaranteeing him a very special place in the landscape of contemporary Belgian art.

Atelier Broucke is the fine workspace of the artist Koen Broucke. A wild environment where all his ‘Identity Artists’ can do their thing. A pianoroom for Leslie François, a big garden for the botanical painter Oscar Mozart and a practice for Psychiatrist Hahneman. Also Ave Maria grottos building contractor Achille Kerkhaven and of course the attitude assistant of Koen, Peggy Renault, found their natural habitat at the divine ArtLab based in Waulsort, and Ostend (Belgium). Drawings, paintings, performances, music, writing, dialogue, research, … Koen and his entourage make and do whatever they feel like.


“It is – however small this presentation may be – an overwhelming compendium of monomaniacal minds. Broucke also describes them – if not extensively, then at least along medical and exhortative terms – in his notes. It is all so splendidly concocted by artist/historian Koen Broucke (1965), who has, for several years now, not only been making up his own genealogy, but also the chronicle of the life and medical history of the imaginary patients of the equally fictional doctor Hahneman. Broucke illustrates his life stories with ‘artefacts’ and other artful creations made by the artistically-inclined patients. You can see them in the display cases in which everything is neatly presented as if, well yes, as if, just like Beuys, Fabre, Manzoni or Panamarenko their lives have become intertwined with their own mythology”

Paul Depondt, The Cabinet of Doctor Hahneman by Koen Broucke in Museum dr. Guislain, A cabinet as a mirror of artists known ‘among doctors’, H ART, 13 july 2006.


Marius Broucke: Koen Broucke at the piano, 2005

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