For the opening of the art season, Stigter Van Doesburg is pleased to present the third solo exhibition of Elspeth Diederix at the gallery.
The still lives of Elspeth Diederix have a precise aim: capture the beauty of the little things that surround us. To achieve her result, the artist cautiously plans and builds sets of collected elements, in order to photograph them at their moment of maximum tension. Beside her works constructed in atelier, many of her images are created in the middle of the nature during her frequent travels. Other times, when she cannot set off, she works with the continuous evolutions of her (studio) garden.
Although her images seem digitally altered, all their effects are obtained by a wise use of manual interventions, as optical illusions or false perspective, without any use of artificial light.
Light is at centre of her work, especially in the way it reflects on both natural elements and synthetic objects. The latter are mostly recurring items as plastic bottles or supermarket bags, which Diederix gives them leading roles in her photographs and then transform them in rainbows or azaleas. Because of that, when present, the human figure has just a supporting position, out of focus or faceless, to not influence the viewer.
In the exhibition at the gallery the artist shows her most recent production. In Bowls, she presents two basic water containers on a table that, throughout a wise combination of dark background and sharp reflections, have gained a solemnity comparable with feasts portrayed in the Dutch Golden Age. Another illusion is made for Blackberries, where the fruits disappear in the dark of their bush, to emerge eventually as constellation in the night. A similar effect happens with Straw, where the green flash above the kid sitting on a sofa is, as the title unveils, a hollow tube of plastic.
