EDEN DIEBEL – THE LOST MEDICI

The first thing one notices about Eden’s work is the darkness, and not just the limitation of light, the absence of illumination, but the metaphoric nature of the images themselves, a psychological darkness that can at times feel forensic, like the discovery of something long buried, uncovered and assembled in order to tell a story.

From an art historical perspective, these buried treasures have a powerful lineage that dates back to several golden periods . . . from the 15th century and the paintings of the Renaissance, Leonardo’s chiaroscuro, the shaping of light and dark in order to create depth, and the macabre illustrations of Hieronymus Bosch in Holland from the same period where religious works were constructed as collages of events, many resembling ‘hellscapes’ or depictions of man’s desires and fears.

There’s an antique feel here, the patina is overall largely yellowed and earth toned, like all things that have aged organically, with a real similarity to art boxes where disparate elements, found objects, collectables are gathered together and presented as a hermetic whole . . . it then becomes the task of each observer to read their own stories into these images, these juxtapositions and collisions of things . . . every picture yielding uncounted narratives.

 Overall, the strength of the photography here is the sense that we’re seeing something so deep and even arcane, yet so accessible and new . . . it’s a high-wire act that when the balance is right scores in a way that addressing simply the wholly modern or the historically referenced can never quite match.

Words by Carl Wyant  

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