the garden, 2020
Exhibition: MOSTRA (2020) Instituto da Agua, Lisbon, Portugal
Drawing upon visual culture that surrounds me, The Garden takes on the subject matter and form of The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450), using analogue collage from popular magazines to explore our contemporary relationship to pleasure, longing, belonging and morality. The exhibition setting is a disused public institution in suburban Lisbon. The opening is postponed as the first lockdown of the pandemic sets in.
The central section aligns itself with Bosch’s interpretation of Purgatory as a world that is a playground. The players are engrossed in themselves and the immediate abundance of pleasure surrounding them. Combining photography of nature, garishly coloured tissue and glittered paper with imagery of the illusions and desires that consumer culture perpetuates, the scene is set to the (now) present day.
In comparison, Bosch’s world is not of its time nor of the future, fusing together various external and personal references to create his own cryptic universe. The choice to turn to the Old Masters came from a yearning to explore scale in both size and subject matter that boldly encompasses the big questions of humanity, however (and especially) inconclusive. By working alongside the Bosch triptych, through the careful process of cutting and pasting and aligning the characters, I entered his work on a different level to that if I was purely a spectator.
What attracted me to this particular triptych by Bosch is the deviation from the generalised viewpoint of the world at that time. The original was painted during a period of discovery and expansion, in stark comparison to our present situation of finite resources. As consumer culture perpetuates excess that threatens humanity and our ecological system, the need to think about our place within the world, as an individual within a greater whole is now our greatest challenge.
The central section aligns itself with Bosch’s interpretation of Purgatory as a world that is a playground. The players are engrossed in themselves and the immediate abundance of pleasure surrounding them. Combining photography of nature, garishly coloured tissue and glittered paper with imagery of the illusions and desires that consumer culture perpetuates, the scene is set to the (now) present day.
In comparison, Bosch’s world is not of its time nor of the future, fusing together various external and personal references to create his own cryptic universe. The choice to turn to the Old Masters came from a yearning to explore scale in both size and subject matter that boldly encompasses the big questions of humanity, however (and especially) inconclusive. By working alongside the Bosch triptych, through the careful process of cutting and pasting and aligning the characters, I entered his work on a different level to that if I was purely a spectator.
What attracted me to this particular triptych by Bosch is the deviation from the generalised viewpoint of the world at that time. The original was painted during a period of discovery and expansion, in stark comparison to our present situation of finite resources. As consumer culture perpetuates excess that threatens humanity and our ecological system, the need to think about our place within the world, as an individual within a greater whole is now our greatest challenge.
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»The Garden (2020)
Mixed media collage on paper
10 frames (104cm x 75cm)
Click on individual panels to enlarge
Photography: Alexandre Ramos 2019