Karin Broos

Karin Broos’ paintings seem finished at first glance. We think we know for sure what we are seeing. The fact that Broos uses photography as a method of capturing moments, details and motifs for his paintings perhaps contributes to this fallacy. Or is it the content? The close family, the home, the farm animals and the nature around. How treacherously recognisable. But after only a brief moment of contemplation, the paintings shy away from our attempts at definition. The beautiful creates anxiety, the depiction of near life reminds us that everything has an end. Broos' painting is enigmatic and multifaceted.

Broos is trained in Holland at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts with the Dutch masters present. Vermeer's everyday motifs and the meaning of what we see in his paintings take on an increasingly incidental meaning when one gives oneself time to sink in. It is not the image that makes the paintings several hundred years later still touch and fascinate. And it is just as little the motifs in Broo's painting that make them crawl under the skin. We see what the pictures represent but still can't describe them. Her painting reaches something within us. Perhaps a realization that we are alone in ourselves, and that unites us unexpectedly as human beings. A little confidence in the uncertainty.

Karin Broos (b. 1950) was educated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in s'Hertogenbosch and today works in Östra Ämtervik, Värmland. Selected exhibitions: House of Sweden, Washington, Swedish American Museum, Chicago, ASI American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Sven Harrys Konstmuseum and Galleri Christian Larsen. Broos is represented, among other things, at Moderna Museet, the Danish Arts Council and in the Bonnier Portrait Collection, Stockholm.

Curator: Andreas Brännström‍

‍Thanks to: Swedish Arts Council, Region Jönköping County, Värnamo Municipality, Vandalorums Partners: Hamrin, Liljedahl, Svenstig
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^{Photo: Anders Bergön}