In his paintings, Diederik Gerlach (1956) frequently refers to the past, not only drawing from his archive from old travel magazines and advertising brochures, but also quoting from art history, in particular from German Romanticism.  After a careful process of formation and deformation these images become transformed. The result is a constructed world containing hidden layers and quotes. The space within the painting is ambiguous, the image can be broken off at the edges or vertically divided into two parts, resembling an opened book.  Sometimes he places an ornamental or emblem like shape. A foreign body such as this sets the image in motion, it charges up the seemingly familiar representation and gives it a new and broader meaning. Diederik Gerlach considers his work autobiografical in essence. However, his paintings are not reconstructions of his memories, but are sooner sublimations of the past. He creates, as it were, a set of completely new memories that might be autobiographical.