VILLAZAN is pleased to present Dennis Schikora and Eline Boerma's first duo exhibition with the gallery in Madrid. The exhibition entitled "STROKES AND TEXTURE: NAVIGATING THROUGH THE ABSTRACT" features a series of never before shown abstract paintings that explore the expression of ideas, emotions and concepts through shapes, colors, lines and textures.

Eline Boerma (born 1999 in the Netherlands) studied Fine Arts at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Utrecht. She explores themes such as time and memory, the body in space, intuition and sensory experiences in nature. Through an abstract language, she talks about nature: experiences in wind, water and waves. Eline understands painting as if it were musical composition. She gives her paintings titles that come from the music she hears while making them. By creating rhythmic patterns with her energetic brushstrokes, she wants the viewer to experience her paintings as we experience music.

Dennis Schikora (b. 2000, Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia) creates works predominantly in an expressive, abstract style, which manifests itself in a playful and effortless aesthetic. Fascinated by themes of limitation and incompleteness, he transmutes nuanced feelings of ephemerality into dynamic compositions, using various mixed media techniques. The artist seeks to explore the intricacies of impermanence and instability in an effort to understand the complexities of the human experience.

Eline presents a series of works based on her sailing trip from the Netherlands to Corsica this summer and the moments she experienced there, such as "the absolute silence in the middle of the windless Mediterranean, with a sea so smooth that it exactly reflects the sky, with no other boat or land around me, or the starry night sky falling like a dome over my little boat, with the stars twinkling because the wind is coming" expresses the artist.

Dennis draws inspiration from literature to create his works, and often begins them with quotes or quirky questions he asks himself. A literature lover, he references writers such as Albert Camus and authors of German Romanticism. He likes to explore themes such as "Sehnsucht", a German word meaning longing and desire, as well as themes such as impermanence and instability as universal feelings that we have all gone through in our lives.

Eline's works explore themes such as time and memory, the body in space, intuition and sensory experiences in nature. She attempts to capture fleeting sensory experiences in her works, amplifying them with expressive lines and colors. Through her unique poetry, she approaches these elements not as subjects, but as ways to explore paint, color and light.

Another of Dennis' inspirations is fashion, one of his earliest passions. He reflects on how he has been influenced by avant-garde fashion, embracing imperfection as a source of beauty. His paintings reveal techniques with an intentionally incomplete appearance. Referring to fashion, Dennis mentions, "It was probably the first time that imperfection touched me in the context of beauty, and it stuck. That had a big influence on my thinking and my concept of a visual Ideal”.

The duo exhibition "STROKES AND TEXTURE: NAVIGATING THROUGH THE ABSTRACT" will run from April 18h through May 11th at VILLAZAN Madrid, Campoamor 17.