Berend Boorsma: UnfoldingApr 3 – Jul 5, 2025

There is a capturing of light, as it fades or burns; neither the height of day nor the blackness of night. The paintings of Berend Boorsma evoke the moments in between – that of dusk or dawn, times of transition, flux, or shifting energies.

Presenting as a kind of monochrome - beige on beige, red on red, grey on grey - the overall tone of each painting emerges from an abundance of shades and different viscosities. Building his paintings in alternating layers of egg tempera and oil – a classical technique that sees washes of thin, watery colour laid on top of heavy oils – Boorsma develops a softness, a diffuse quality that recalls the density and atmosphere of a fog or mist.

Light and dark, warm and cool, almost every colour in the spectrum is present, suspended in and amongst the many layers of paint, and so, rather than sitting still on the surface, the colours hum and trill, their shimmering quality bringing a sense of energy to the stillness of their composition.

Occupying the frame are sheets of paper, their surfaces marked by their folding and unfolding. There are long, ribbon-like strands that tumble and tangle, or that snake across the surface. There are horizons that recall the skies and seas of J.M.W Turner, and there are orbs that glow with the same cool stillness as the moon.

Ideas of stillness and movement, space and energy, emptiness and presence abound in Boorsma’s sparse compositions, which seem both straightforward and mysterious. Neither representational, figurative or abstract, Boorsma works without sketch nor subject. Coming to the fore through an open, explorative process, the artist is carried along by the work – forever unfixed and unfolding.