NL/EN

shimmer – Renze Dijkema & Marije Bouman
27 January – 2 March 2024

‘Shimmer’ features the work of two painters who each document their surroundings and nature in their own way. Although the results are very different, the work of Renze Dijkema and Marije Bouman often features the shimmer of light. Visitors to this exhibition can lose themselves in a new ‘landscape’ in each painting.

Renze Dijkema has been walking along the coast for years. Regularly, he takes a picture of what is in front of him, what he is walking towards. The horizon is always in the middle of the image, the water on the right and the land on the left. These photos, which find their way into photo books and on Instagram, are the source for the paintings that are on display in his second exhibition of the artist in the gallery.

His walks started at the Dutch Wadden Sea, but he soon extended his area to the area from Denmark’s Esbjerg, to walk all the way around European coast. In 2023, he completed his walk around France. Many of the paintings in this exhibition therefore focus on the French coast, from Brittany to the Riviera, but regularly Dijkema reverts to earlier parts of his tour for example the Dutch coast.

From a distance, the paintings themselves look almost like photographs, but those who get closer see that they are actually quite basic and abstracted images. The shapes are tightly rendered, the paint strokes clearly visible. If you distance yourself again, the photorealistic image reappears. Light and atmosphere play an important role. There are sunrises and sunsets, fog, or drizzly days. For those who love the sea, the senses immediately turn on, you can almost smell the salty sand and the sea, and hear the rushing of the water.

Marije Bouman is exhibiting for the first time at gallery with tsjalling, but already has a long track record. She has exhibited very regularly at Museum Belvédère in Heerenveen, and at other museums and galleries in the Netherlands and Belgium.

The vast space of the landscape is her inspiration. Between the human traces in the everyday environment, such as canals, ditches with different water levels, railway line, highway, aqueducts and transmission towers, she looks for a metaphysical experience in the space in between and beyond: the infinite mobility of water, light, air, nature. Every day looks different and she sees different things reflecting something intangible that is very real.

From Bouman we show recent paintings, in which she lets go a little of the overtly scenic elements that were previously in her work. In her latest works, the intangible in nature is really the subject: a glimpse of sunlight through the leaves of shrubbery, the sparkles on water, the moving shadows of branches on the forest floor, the sunlight behind the clouds. She also uses shapes that emerge while painting and to which she responds. Then something untold sneaks into the material and the image that emerges. The results are sensitive paintings that let the viewer experience nature together with the artist.

Instagram Marije Bouman