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Paper Fleet: Myth and Memory Afloat - 2025

Diek Grobler at Tertius Gallery Amsterdam. Opening 17 August 2025 I have been painting paper boats and paper jets for almost 40 years. They represent concepts and ideas; visible thoughts floating on the subconscious sea. As such, they can represent anything ? the little boat can be a symbol of migration, or it can be a symbol of colonisation. I used it as both in this exhibition: Both migration and colonisation are issues we are constantly confronted with. In some of the works the paper boats and jets combine, unfold, reconfigure themselves to become armour, sentinels and sirens. Tertius has been collecting my work since we first met in the 90?s, and therefore owns an overview of my career, in a sense. He is an incurable aesthete and romantic. He is also drawn to the unusual, the intriguing and the surreal. I think these are all characteristics which he finds in my work. I often find that he intuitively understands what a work is about. He has never asked me about the ?meaning? of a work, which is one of the most dreaded questions an artist ever have to answer. To have to explain an artwork is to annihilate it.