Statement and Bio

My paintings are abstract ecologies that geometric forms materialize out of and disappear into. Grounds may act like supple membranes, airy atmospheres, syrupy pools, or waxy skins that forms can sink into, emerge from, or sit on top of. The particular energies and gravities of forms results in a pressurized space of painterly play, with forms pushing and pulling on each other as they hover and orbit. Guided by mysterious yet palpable forces, the result is a spatial physics in which forms settle into purposeful arrangements or formations, like impossible celestial systems, strange microscopic or atomic structures, or arrangements of ritualistic objects.

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Kaden Van De Loo is a painter based in Milwaukee. Raised in Appleton, WI in a household of musicians, he grew up constantly exposed to a wide range of experimental and improvisational music. Naturally acquiring a sensitivity to the qualities of sound like tone, timbre, color, rhythm, space, and atmosphere that were part of daily life, this environment contributed to his inclinations toward comparable qualities in visual abstraction. Since receiving a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2024, Van De Loo has had solo shows at Portrait Society Gallery and the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Additionally, he has exhibited at Var Gallery, the Trout Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and Greenpoint Open Studios in New York City. In 2024-25, he was an artist in residence in Plum Blossom Initiative's Bridge Work 10 professional development program. He participated in the Atlanta Art Fair with Real Tinsel in 2024 and Door County Contemporary with Portrait Society in 2026. Van De Loo's work has been published in New American Paintings and reviewed in The Shepherd Express.