Introduction to my work
Most of my paintings are about a mood. Imagine you also regard a mood as a story. It simply takes time to discover what that story is. Because that story is largely a feeling that is difficult to put into words. You are used to ‘reading’ a figurative painting. But that’s not how it works when a painting is also about feeling. You have to look at it for longer to really see the painting and experience its atmosphere and meaning. What’s interesting here is how an experience or a mood is translated into words, into a story. Into a meaning.
Figurative works made with abstract principles
Paintings from the period 2004–2013 and the new paintings from 2023 onwards are figurative works made with abstract principles. The subject is of secondary importance. It often acts as a starter to get the imagination going. Especially the way in which you paint something – the form – plays a decisive role in creating the meaning of a work. So the colour and the skin of a painting play a dominant role. I avoid perfection. Life is not perfect either. Usually messy, unpredictable and painful. But I look for beauty in the authenticity of materials and composition.
My ideas are born while working
And my ideas takeshape while working. It is an interplay between head and hands. It is a form of thinking out loud. Chance plays a big role. The work arises through “playing”. For me, it is essential to arrive at a visual meaning without logic or language. You play with ambivalent, irrational and uncertain elements. It is also the truth of the absurd that fascinates me. I give most of my works a title. Not to explain them but to add a literary element that helps me think about a work. It is a dialogue with myself. Most of my work balances in the twilight zone between abstraction and figuration.
I am a narrative painter
Not narrative in the sense of an anecdote, but narrative about a subject that I usually research for a few years. Some paintings from the period 2004–2013 could be seen as an unconscious attempt to represent loneliness. Emptiness and barrenness were constructed by distorting perspective, using colour and making compositional interventions. The subjects are diverse. However different the works from the various periods may seem, there are also many connecting aspects. I usually abstract the form. In recent years, my work has become more sketchy and “rough”. The borderland between figuration and abstraction has always fascinated me.
From an interview
“My work is ambiguous. There are always unconscious factors that lead to a certain conception. Afterwards one can say: ‘It’s a good work.’ But what is good about a work, you don’t really know. Therefore, interpreting a work is a rationalisation in retrospect.”
THE ART CRITICS
The German art critic Larissa Kikol wrote:
“Broekhuis’s new sculptures and set-ups are at the same time surrealistic dream images, which act on two levels of speech: that of the abstract story and that of the abstract image. In the abstract story you see metaphors and figurative images, in which the illusion of meaning does not necessarily wait for a translation. The abstract images here are not so much paintings reminiscent of the American abstract expressionists. For Robert Broekhuis, abstract means first and foremost absurd, even mysterious. In his work you do not see the notion of a transparent and predictable world.”
The in-between space
“…The movement that Robert Broekhuis himself brings about in his paintings is that of free fall, a weightless turning point in existence. He makes it possible for you to imagine this, even in paintings that lack the human figure. They offer you the freedom to imagine something that is absent in the painting. The work of Robert Broekhuis always shows an in-between space, the so-called liminal space that automatically transports you from one situation to another. A liminal space is always a transitional area where you stay for a short time, a landing, a corridor, a space revealed by a tall window or ajar door. It is the threshold of consciousness, the space between conjecture and knowing, between outside and inside, the imaginary space of a stair step that you miss when you stumble. Man then has an imperfect presence…”
Alex de Vries, 2022
The language of things
“The artist uses objects and materials unlike other abstract artists, solely because of their meaning. The route we take within his work is intimate and an exceptional form of communicating the unspeakable. Outside the abstract aspect of his work and the ‘musical’ part, we interpret. Conscious of the language of things, of the poetry of space, he builds up a series of associations that create a space of experience. In the end, the work of art guides us through the maker’s course. The artist seems to end his journeys with beauty as eternal comfort for loss and desire. Treacherous though, because on closer inspection he uses aesthetics to entice spectators to consider his work in more depth. And then it turns out to be a metaphor for loss, destruction and cruelty. In spite of this, his work also shows a zest for life and humour … His work can be regarded as an investigation into the human condition and the vulnerable state in which we humans find ourselves.” Maurice van Tellingen, 2018