North Gallery

Diek Grobler

Diek Grobler - Déjà Vu
6 October to 28 October 2023
 
Déjà Vu, an exhibition of recent work by Pretoria artist Diek Grobler, is a collection of gouache and mixed media paintings, pinscreen drawings and animation film frames.  Diek Grobler is a multi-media/multi-disciplinary artist with a career spanning 35 years.  Starting out as a sculptor in the late eighties, Grobler’s creative output included performance art, painting in various media, and scraperboard drawing.  Over the last decade his creative focus has shifted largely to animated film - his films for children received awards at international festivals.
 
Déjà vu – French for ‘already seen’ - refers to the uncanny feeling one gets that an experience at a certain moment has occurred before.  By using the term déjà vu, Grobler refers firstly to him revisiting motives which he has been employing for decades, particularly that of a paper jet and a paper boat.  These represent two related, but opposite aspects of thought: both are perfectly engineered little objects made from discarded paper.  The jet flies gracefully but without purpose or direction whereas the boat floats; it’s not going anywhere fast, but it contains and supports.  These refer to the usefulness or uselessness of ideas.
 
Secondly it is found in his continued use of undefined, suggestive narratives which seem familiar because they contain fragments of known stories.  Grobler’s narratives are seldom clear or linear and are always concerned with some existential concept wrapped in a demystified myth, fairy tale or Bible story.  The visual influence of three artists who always inspired his work – René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico and Max Beckman – can also be observed.
 
Thirdly Grobler focuses on animation in which a single picture is repeated almost endlessly with minimal alteration to create the illusion of movement.  Watching animation literally means you constantly see pictures you have already seen before.
 
The activity of animation film is represented in this exhibition in two forms - the first being a collection of screen shots from his most recent film Laaste Woord shown as single-edition digital prints.  The second is a series of drawings Grobler made using a very unique animation device - a pinscreen - a white screen perforated with thousands of small holes into which tiny pins are inserted.  Images are created on the screen by moving the pins in or out of the holes with pressing an object onto the screen.  The screen is lit from the side so that the pins cast shadows.  Drawings are literally made with light and shadow.