Dennis Vanderbroeck is a 22 years old artist born in The Netherlands, who  is graduating at the Theatre Academy in Maastricht and specializing in performance art. As for his own work as an artist, Dennis creates cross-overs between his fascinations, such as fashion, performance and video. Why fashion? Well, he thinks fashion is one of the most influential art directions, the whole world has something to do with fashion. He has said that he always put a lot of effort into his styling and his work because he really thinks it can complete a story or ambiance you want to communicate.

Althought Dennis doesnt’ have the ambition to create clothes himself, he really likes working with young designers. That’s why recently Dennis fulfilled his internship at the Danish fahsion designer Henrik Vibskov Company. In an interview, Dennis said that it all started when he decided to send a bottle with a letter to Henrik, because he had the feeling he had to be there. He wrote him asking if it was possible to help creating an installation which is always part of his fashion shows. The answer was yes, so he had the opportunity to work on creating the catwalk installation for the autumn winter show. The title of the show was “The Shrink Wrap Spectacular”, so he made a huge drum machine which was activated by the models as soon as they walked on it.

Besides the above, Dennis usually collaborates with Marius Mensink, with whom he forms a perfomance duo called STUDIO/MENSINK/VANDERBROEK, specialized in theatrical performances. Also he is involved in the FASHIONCLASH, a fashion event that searches for the clash between fashion and other art disciplines and that he himself defines as something like a completely creative chaos explosion which stretches out the boundaries of fashion.

Returning to Dennis’ own work, he describes it as highly esthetic and humorous. His images are characterized by minimalist, clean and primitive and with his childish way of approaching it he tries to create a universe without boundaries, a place where anything can happen. An important fact to note is that he works totally autonomous, without the help of digital techniques, from creating the costumes till the point of making the shots. His most recent story is the serie “Howblue was bad and yellow good”, wich is a research on colour and shape. It’s about the clash between the internal and external universes, about hiding the true identity, blow it up or dissapear into the background. The title of the serie refers to the kidney affliction, called minimal change, that Vanderbroeck had from his childhood till recent.

Text by Alina Lakitsch