Duo solo exhibition Isabelle Borges & Zoë d’Hont
Opening Sunday, March 1st 2026 from 15:00 – 19:00 hrs
01.03.2026 – 18.04.2026
Unfolding Voids – Isabelle Borges
Movement in Repose – Zoë d’Hont
Frank Taal Galerie is excited to welcome you to the duo solo exhibition featuring Isabelle Borges (Brazil, 1966; lives and works in Berlin) and Zoë d’Hont (Netherlands, 1990; lives and works in Rotterdam).
The exhibition showcases two distinct solo presentations from artists who, despite working in different media, share a common focus on architecture, nature, and the experience of space and place.
‘Unfolding Voids’ | Isabelle Borges (Brazil, 1966; lives and works in Berlin)
“By exploring structures found in nature, I seek the tension between the lines and shapes created by voids. I don’t see the void as empty, but as an energy space. In an intuitive, playful way, I search for shapes and forms created by the emptiness between lines, and by the use of colour, other spheres open up. The colours are emotional and intuitively applied. I use many thin layers of colour to create a space within the voids. In my perception, everything is related and connected. In the abstract shapes and lines, it is as if I’m unfolding voids into new spaces, new portals for the imagination.”
Borges, a Berlin-based artist of Brazilian origin, explores the relationship between space, order, and perception in her art, always seeking a balance between construction and intuition.
Her focus is on the geometry of the spaces in between—the empty spaces that arise between things and in which spatial dynamics unfold. Borges creates pictorial spaces that expand and contract, a visual continuum of tension and relaxation reminiscent of moving, breathing fields. Lines, grids, and structures condense into a visual rhythm that appears both structured and lively.
In this current series of works, large areas of colour, bold colours, and subtle colour gradients come to the fore. The surfaces glow, light up the room, pulsate, shift in relation to one another—they create depth, but also friction, sometimes contemplative, sometimes vibrant. The colour gradients create transitions between clarity and blur, between construction and dissolution. She uses colour not only as a design element, but also as a vehicle for movement and atmosphere, as a living element within her structural compositions.
Isabelle Borges was born in Salvador, Brazil, in 1966. Between 1985 and 1987, she studied Social Sciences at the University of Brasilia. Between 1988 and 1992, she lived in Rio de Janeiro, where she attended the Escola Visual do Parque Lage and had professors such as Beatriz Milhazes, Daniel Senise, and Charles Watson, among others. In 1993, she immigrated to Germany, initially living in Cologne and working as an assistant to the studio of Antonio Dias and the American artist Jack Ox, who was researching the work of Kurt Schwitters, a German Dadaist artist. Contact with Schwitters’s work strongly influenced Isabelle Borges’s work, especially in her collage series. Between 1996 and 1997, she worked as an assistant to Sigmar Polke. At the end of 1997, Borges moved to Berlin, where she currently resides and works.
Rooted in a multi-layered tradition of abstract art, Borges’ practice is informed by the Brazilian Neo-Concrete movement as well as European and American abstraction of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet her approach remains open and non-dogmatic: flatness and spatial illusion, intuition and structure, order and openness are held in constant dialogue.
Just last year, Borges was presented solo in galleries in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Frankfurt, as well as in museums in Germany and the Netherlands. Also, in 2025, Isabelle Borges attended a three-month artist-in-residence at the world-renowned European Ceramic Work Centre in Oisterwijk, The Netherlands. She is represented by galleries in Europe and South America. Her work is part of both private and institutional collections worldwide.
‘Movement in Repose’ – Zoë d’Hont (Netherlands, 1990; lives and works in Rotterdam)
Through the slow processes of listening, embroidery and weaving, Zoë d’Hont (NL, 1990) explores a sense of place and belonging. Visual and audible waveforms emerge as dreamlike architectures and cosmic resonances. Sound, light, emotions, perceptions, fields of force, and energy—everything that exists— moves through time and space.
In her carefully crafted works, wave lines are threaded through time. They arise from a practice of deep attention to movement in all its forms. “I experience every stitch as a droplet that creates a wave; by observing these waves, I try to come closer to perceiving the water itself. My attention departs from the small and flows toward the vast.”
With a background in classical piano, Zoë is interested in interpreting existing scores and systems of language. Scores function as a way of sharing a composition, a situation, or a constellation of moments. The egolessness of the shared and the individuality of interpretation form a delicate balance between multiplicity and unity. Reinterpreting historical material creates a poetic interplay between past and present. Re-enactment is never a simple repetition of what came before; each new movement deepens the experience of meaning.
In the summer of 2025, Zoë resided for two weeks in the former home of Simeon ten Holt in Bergen. There, she studied Ear-Walking Woman by Annea Lockwood, for prepared piano—a piece that presents itself as a walk through the sonic landscape of the piano. Just as Simeon ten Holt described his Canto Ostinato as a process of repetition in which the musical object becomes “translucent”. Zoë turns her subjects over, again and again, ultimately arriving at a similar kind of transparency.
Side program on Sundays during the exhibition
On Sundays during the exhibition, Zoë d’Hont will host a series of workshops focused on Deep Listening—a gentle yet radical practice of paying attention. Listening is deeply connected to silence. Our world is loud and full of stimuli constantly pulling at us. But how do we meet silence, or absence?
Becoming still creates space: space in the mind, space for others, space to feel more deeply. This can feel uncomfortable or confronting, yet practising stillness can strengthen our connection to ourselves and to the world around us. In this sense, slowing down can spark inner and energetic movement.
By learning to appreciate subtle, slow transformations, we nurture a more sustainable sense of well-being and compassion. Revaluing slowness and the everyday opens a way of listening with rather than listening to. The self and the other are not separate.
During the workshops, we will explore this together through subtle movement, listening and imagination exercises, and by sharing experiences. The visual works in the exhibition will serve as a starting point for collective exploration. The workshops can be attended as a series or individually. Please follow our website and social media to stay up to date.
Time: 11 AM – 13 PM
Sunday March 15 ‘Emptying the cup’
Sunday March 22 ‘Sense of place’
Sunday March 29 ‘Drawing and writing through listening’
Sunday April 12 ‘Timetraveling through memory and dreams’
with special guest Fang Mij.