In 1991 in her Nobel lecture, the celebrated South African author stated, "I have said that nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction. The life, the opinions, are not the work, for it is in the tension between standing apart and being involved that the imagination transforms both."

 These words ring true when considering Chris Diedericks' art. Captivating the viewer in his imaginative reworking of the observed world (whilst retaining its mimesis), the artist sets up dialogical transactions between human beings and the world out there. By using recognisable form to create  portraits of individuals, he defamiliarises the familiar through uncanny postures and actions in order to comment on the human condition. In his current works, male figures spewing fishes and butterflies seem to be celebrating life in joyous  abundance. These works link with earlier ones such as his memento mori and memento vivere works that referred to the duality of remembering that one must die, but also remembering that one must live. Immediately the Greek goddess of youth, Hebe, springs to mind who was immensely popular in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries as a mythological inspiration for paintings as well as garden fountains. In a revolutionary time of new technological inventions such as the telephone, the camera, mechanical robotics and other scientific advances, Hebe seems to have represented humankind's eternal drive to invent, renew and rejuvenate. In Diedericks' case, the somewhat rebellious figures may represent human beings' continuous defiance to accept stale values of the status quo, but also represent the vanguardism of the artist producing magical and imaginative new worlds.

In some of Diedericks' works, the male figure somehow resembles the artist. By mirroring the self in the self-portrait and as such creating an illusion of itself is an act of translation, allowing for a moment of uncanny self-recognition and even self-reflection.  The Freudian notion of the uncanny (in German Das Unheimliche ) entails a situation where something is familiar, yet strange, and as such creates a kind of  cognitive conflict within the onlooker.  Yet,  in Diedericks' case such conflict becomes an act of resonance and instigation, whereby reality and its experiences of the artist as a 'living' human being  (through the self-portrait) are renegotiated to the onlooker as an existential condition, and the viewer is invoked as a voluntary inhabitant of the resourceful universe of the artist.

When the real of the observed world becomes transmuted into alternative dimensions, constellations or relationships as in Diedericks' work,  it is not itself any longer and functions as a kind of disembodied reference. However, the corporeality of the artist's figures is constantly affirmed and reaffirmed,  and by so doing the very archaic attachment to the earth, soil - Mother Nature - is  avowed. It becomes a renewed allegiance to mortality; memento mori remains found even in the memento vivere.

To return to Gordimer's words,  maybe the fiction that is set up in Diedericks' work is a much more potent and pertinent comment on existentiality: the artist probes, finds, discards, reworks and rearranges in order to reflect 'truth' in a new order and novel constellations. This is the tension that resides in being occupied with the human condition in all its complexities, anxieties and joys.

Elfriede Dreyer (curator)

Specialists in contemporary South African art   |   www.friedcontemporary.com

1146 Justice Mahomed Street (formerly 430 Charles Street), Brooklyn 0181

|   info@friedcontemporary.com     |   +27 (0)12 346 0158

Gallery hours: Tues to Fri:  9am to 5pm    |    Sat 10am - 2pm

 

Fine Arts Cum Laude graduate from the University of Potchefstroom, Christiaan Diedericks has created an impressive body of work over the years. He went on to complete his Masters in Fine Arts Cum Laude (practical component) at the University of Pretoria in 2000.

 Diedericks has exhibited extensively throughout Southern Africa, as well as internationally. His work has been exhibited in the USA, Japan, Finland, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Poland, Belgium, England, Sweden and France, where he worked, as artist in residence, at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Diedericks has also worked in New York, after receiving the prestigious Ampersand Foundation Fellowship, where his work was exhibited to critical acclaim in the New York Blade newspaper, at the gallery 5+5 in Brooklyn, in December 2007. 

Diedericks, amongst his many achievements, has also been awarded artist residencies at the Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium; The Halka Art Project, Istanbul, Turkey; The Venice Print Studio for large format printmaking, Italy and the Il Bisonte Printmaking studio in Florence, Italy recently awarded Diedericks with an AIR in June/July 2013. In November/December 2013 the artist is invited to live and work at the Guanlan Print Base in Shenzhen, China.

 In 2006 Christiaan was the winner of the coveted Kanna award for Fine Arts at the ABSA KKNK festival in Oudtshoorn for his exhibition Secrets and Lies: Her Majesty's Ivory Tower. He has also been given numerous grants over a broad spectrum, which range from a NAC International bursary for workshops in non-toxic printmaking in 1999 from the Grande Prairie Regional College in Alberta, Canada, to being chosen to appear on the 13th “The Apprentice” on SABC 3 in Johannesburg in 2005.

 Collections? ?

 Potchefstroom Museum - South Africa?

Potchefstroom University - South Africa?

Ostrobothnian Museum - Vaasa - Finland?

Cité Internationale des Arts - Paris - France?

Museum of Contemporary Art - Chamalieres - Auvergne - France?

SAAA - Head office - Pretoria - South Africa (collection sold)?

Biblioteque Nationale - Paris - France?

The Robert Loder private collection - Johannesburg - South Africa?

Telkom SA LTD - Johannesburg?

Investec Bank - Cape Town?

Pretoria Technikon - Pretoria?

Durban University of Technology ?

Sasol – Johannesburg

Sasol Group Services – Secunda

Sasol Gas – Johannesburg?

Medunarodna Galerija Portreta - Tuzla - Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Muceo Nacional del Grabado - Buenos Aires - Argentina?

Durban Art Gallery - Durban?

ABSA Bank – Johannesburg?

Rand Merchant Bank – Johannesburg?

Spier Collection – Stellenbosch?

Sanlam Collection – Cape Town?

MTN Collection – Johannesburg?

Artbank – Johannesburg

The Department of Art and Technology, – Pretoria

New York Public Library print collection, - New York City, USA

Ampersand Foundation studio collection, - New York City

Johannesburg Art Gallery

Gallery 5 + 5, Brooklyn, - New York City

Dept of Science and Technology - CSIR – Pretoria

RMB Academy – Johannesburg

Potchefstroom Gimnasium – Potchefstroom

University of Johannesburg – Johannesburg

ATKV – Johannesburg

Frans Masereel Centrum – Kasterlee, Belgium

MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art) – New York City, USA

South African Consulate – Lagos, Nigeria

Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art – NYC, USA

University of Cape Town – Cape Town

La collection de la Biennale Internationale d’estampe Contemporaine de Trois-Rivières – Quebec, Canada

Iziko South African National Gallery– Cape Town

  "In my work, time and space appear to dissolve, and an air of conflict erupts. This is often a direct result of a personal aim to calm and disturb at the same time - drawing parallels between the two extremes of utopia and dystopia. There is always a secondary narrative in my work. The primary narrative has symbolic authority and aesthetic promise, although the mysterious secondary narrative exists in order to provoke thought in the viewer.

 In many ways I aim to ‘rewrite’ history in my work and the dominant sense of self-awareness that informs most Western art practices. I am trying to present contemporary issues such as Difference as timeless, by situating my vocabulary of images and themes in an organic flux of dreams, history, news, commercial detritus, hyper-reality, and unvoiced feelings and forces of biological nature/desire."

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Fried Contemporary has for the past eight years been advising on contemporary art acquisition to corporations, public institutions and private investors.

Providing an inventive forum for contemporary art, the  Gallery has an increasing following of more than 2000 visitors per year and provides information to more than 50 schools and universities.

Its geolocality positions the Gallery as showcase for the talent of major artists, emerging graduates from top institutions and selected rural artists.