Diderik Klomberg

Diderik Klomberg was born in 1963 in Oisterwijk (NL)

crossroads

I believe that Diederik Klomberg starts from this assumption in the realisation of his work: the nature of illusion is that it is illusory. Should he try to demonstrate that illusion is not true but just an illusion he confronts us with, we could justly say that we already knew this. Artists who want to reveal something are for this reason always annoying because often we already knew what (‘Suddenly!’) is revealed. Even by going to extremes to make illusion unavoid able Diederik Klomberg opens a door and shows something.
The remark that something is shown through an open door should not be taken literally because that would mean that illusion reveals something while we just decided that there is no other truth than illusion itself. Experiencing these works nothing is revealed, they are illusory. But it does occur while reflecting on this experience. Through the organisation of information which Diederik Klomberg construes in his works a specific quality of our eyesight is reflected because this device, operated by knowledge, will always evoke a certain sensation (‘Illusion!’) in a fixed process of cause and effect.

junction

Clearly the effect is the awareness of an illusion. The cause, however, cannot simply be attributed either to the situation construed by the artist or to the specific quality of eyesight. Rather, the situation as it is found together with this quality constitutes the illusion. In fact illusion can only come about when these two conditions are present simultaneously, the situation that is construed and which we perceive through eyesight. I then conclude that illusion occurs when there is no causal distinction between object and subject.
Herein lies the unsettling quality of illusion because we have to acknowledge that situations exist which we cannot attribute unequivocally to a cause exclusively outside of us. With such a cause only one of the conditions mentioned above is fulfilled. That special device, our eyesight must necessarily be present because only then the second condition is fulfilled. Usually there is no potentially illusory environment and then we will not perceive illusion. But even if a potentially illusory environment is out there somewhere illusion is only possible if we look at it.
Did someone recently consider seriously that something exists only when we look at it? I would reproach such a person with higher psychedelica and from then on always ignore her or him. But now I have to establish that Diederik Klomberg´s work essentially only exists when it is perceived, not by a bat or a divine angel but for instance by me. This observation is at least as unsettling as the one where we could not indicate unequivocal external causes for an illusory sensation. Illusion is a special phenomenon on the basis of which an unusual view on reality can be rendered.

- Text by Ad van Rosmalen (excerpt)