Adriaan Diedericks: Christened Ships
Until February 2017, 99 Loop, Cape Town
Exhale (detail)
About exhibition:
The work in ‘Christened Ships’ brings to mind the sculptural forms of Ancient Greece, with undeniably contemporary refinement. Drawing on Classical, African and European mythology, Diedericks incorporates imagery that hints at how the past haunts present consciousness.
Burdened Man.
Just as the mythical Theseus was given a ball of twine to follow in his search through the Cretan labyrinth, there are clues for the audience to follow in ‘Christened Ships’. We can connect visual threads of themes that Diedericks has been exploring since his first solo exhibition in 2015, and which he here refines. Theseus, St Sebastian, Adamastor and other myths are all explored through elements of the sculptures, with the central imagery focusing on journeys, colonisation, violence, progress and identity – all subjects that speak to the problematic nature of power.
The impact of the collection lies not only in its intriguing imagery, but in Diedericks’s use of scale, with sculptures ranging from 2.4 metres tall to a mere 15 cm.
Corpus Ships Arrows, 2016.
As much as his work is a personal and purposeful journey for Diedericks, just like a labyrinth serves metaphorically as an introspective path, so too does each viewer of this body of work gain different insights into the work and, ultimately, into themselves.
For South African sculptor Adriaan Diedericks (born 1990 in Cape Town), the male body in art is a vessel for examining power, glory, humiliation and the dynamics around them. His sculptures solicit reflections on masculinity and its place in history.
Burdened Men, 2016.
About:
Diedericks’s upbringing in rural Piketberg pervaded the conceptual impetus of his early projects, which attempted to mimic the expansive landscape of his youth. His practice then developed from drawing into three-dimensionality. Referencing classical imagery in his current work, he manipulates scale and material, working in traditional bronze, as well as contemporary substances such as resin, found wood and plastic.
Adamastor.
Diedericks worked as an assistant to renowned local sculptor, painter and print-maker, Lionel Smit, as well as Lionel’s father Anton, also a well-known sculptor.