It's an understatetment to say that Erik Dietman is a world-beater, never beaten, extremely "beat", cheeky, never sorry, wild, unsubdued, unrepentant. In fact, Erik Dietman dampens depiction. When you try to describe him, you're sentenced to euphemism. Only he succeeded in finding the right définition of himself, since he made it simple: Erik Dietman, large artist. Here is roughly what can be said about the man, without totally barking up the wrong tree.

On the other hand, we can try and get closer to his work itself by putting it into context, however remote we'll have to stay. Erik Dietman, large artist, closely knew Fluxus and met the new realists before they'd even chosen their name. This is to say what a flair he had for chosing friends and fellows. However, even though he'd been King of bandage for a time, he never in his life stuck to any mouvement, except of course that of meals from kitchen to table.

For him, art was an everyday practice similar to sport or digestion, and never actually differed from cooking. The expression " to feed on" could have been invented especially for him. The only difference between art and cooking is that Erik Dietman's work required more time than most known recipes, that is to say an average one to four years. Then again, the resemblance between art and cooking lies in the prevalence of language. Very much like the imaginary of gastronomy, the composition of his works (which is way more complex than it first seems) issues from pervasive language. He himself considered his works as things written before they were drawn, painted or cast.

No one can tell exactly how many languages he spoke, but the boundless puns brightening his drawings, and catalogue captions mingle a whole lot of them. Similarily, the patterns in his works, whatever media is concerned, require close inspection to reveal their full content of hidden characters,
Although Erik Dietman has had a great deal of shows, pieces to be seen here were rarely exhibited before, or some time ago, or abroad. The bronze pieces desserve spécial attention, since each of them gives a difinition of bronze so different from of the others that they all seem to contradict one another.

The gigantic Landscape in Normandy set outside is a "bronzai" with a green finish. The "bronzai" process is very primitive even though Dietman invented it. The melting metal was thrown into sand so that the resulting flowery shapes are absolutely random – a rough physical experiment. The Lighthouse combines bronze and iron and conceals behind a sober title and aspect a full amount of different meanings, just as the drawings do. Welding and composition give a good idea of the tiny familiar details of a domestic world Erik Dietman turns into wilderness. Last but not least, the Turkish proverb, an environmental installation of 40 pairs of bronze shoes, reflects its mistery in a warm leather-coulored patina


This exhibition is a new step in the process of highlighting corpus so huge that no one can tell for sure that it will ever be fully explored. Erik Dietman's work has always been in progress, the show is going on
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