The Gardener

ABOUT CHRIS:

BIOGRAPHY:

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 Chhaap Foundation in India recently awarded Diedericks with an AIR in June/July 2013.  

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

“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.”

October 2012