Aldo Van den Broek

Self-taught painter and sculptor Aldo van den Broek embraces chaos as both method and philosophy. Working primarily with cardboard, wood, and metal layered with paint, he allows material, colour, and coincidence to shape the work. For him, chaos is not disorder but a generative force, one that keeps the process alive and the work in motion.

Chaos as Method

"I never went to art school. I'm self-taught, and maybe my way of working is unusual because I never learned the rules in the first place. Independence is important to me; it allows me to destroy, rebuild, and keep the work moving."

"Chaos is central to my process. For me it's not disorder but a method, a way of letting material, colour, and coincidence shape the work. When I paint, things spill over, get torn, patched again. It always unfolds unpredictably."

"At first sight my work can look dark, but it isn't. I use a lot of white. Light comes from what's left unpainted, the rough edges, the raw surface. A single interruption of colour can shift the whole balance."

Materials with a Past

"I'm drawn to surfaces with history. For years I have worked on cardboard: fragile, foldable, easy to carry. I once travelled with a twenty-metre piece folded into hand luggage, creases and all, and used those folds in the composition. Today I often alternate between cardboard, wood, and metal. I use cigarette packs as a kind of sketchbook or diary — fragile, pocket-sized, always with me. They carry notes and drawings made in passing, which sometimes remain as independent works, or find their way, scarred and folded, into larger pieces."

"Living in Berlin shaped me deeply. The city is full of scars, layers, constant construction and destruction. Later in Tbilisi I noticed façades patched with mismatched bricks, balconies added by residents. That rawness — the labour and history written into the surface — gave me the freedom to work in the same way: to build, to break, to start over. Chaos, I realised, can be a foundation."

Letting Accidents Stay

"Accidents keep the work alive. My son sometimes splashes paint across a nearly finished canvas. A collector's dog once chewed the bottom of a work for years. When I work outside, rain, sun, and wind leave their own marks. These interventions are never mistakes. They become part of the biography of the piece. Craft, for me, is knowing when to follow the accident instead of erasing it."