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The exhibition “The Garden of Earthly Delights” at Wynn Palace Macao was one of the highlights in Art Macao 2019, the first edition of its international art exhibition took over 33 museums and landmarks across Macao during five months from June – October 2019.
Inspired by a painting from 500 years ago
Inspired by a painting from 500 years ago, the exhibition named after a famous work of Hieronymus Bosch- a Dutch renaissance master artist during the 16th century. “The Garden of Earthly Delights” believed to be drawn between the year 1490-1510. This 2.55 x 3.85 m triptych depicts three scenes of heaven, earth, and hell. The left panel describes the atmosphere of heaven, when God created Adam and Eve, the first pair of humans. In contrast, the right panel shows how human is suffering from greed and lust. The centerpiece, which is the main content of the painting, portrays a lively ambiance with large garden, ponds, and fountains. The naked men and women are grouping in various postures amid animals, everything seems to blend together joyfully.
Take a step back and look at the overall of all panels. The landscape and sky horizon of the left and center frame is connected. While the image of hell on the right applied dark colors to emphasize the despairing atmosphere, creating conflict rhythms of contrast. Is it possible that the artist wanted to point out the common connection between heaven and earth? Is it possible that human lust and greed turn heaven to hell? How an individual’s world will be like is determined by an area of satisfaction (Delights) or limitation of indulgence.
It’s not surprising that all artworks at Wynn’s exhibition reflected the concepts of “space.” The curator, Chip Tom, invited seven international artists in the different artistic domain, to exhibit their work in Macao for the first time.
Artists line up: Herb Alpert, MAD Architects (Yangson Ma), Refik Anadol, Jennifer Steinkamp, Sam and Shingo Francis and Edoardo Tresoldi.
Time travel from Italian medieval to contemporary Macao
Upon entering, we will be greeted by video art from Refik Anadol, artists and professors from the University of California, Los Angeles, who specialized in created art from data and algorithms. The ‘Macau Current: Data Printing’ sea-color video art is a data sculpture inspired by the data of sea surface movement of Macao, which collected every 30 minutes for 30 days with high-frequency radar. Then, all information will be processed by data science and machine learning principles to generate stunning visual art. Located nearby, ‘The Melting Memories ‘ is another example of how the artist sculpts data into art. This work picturizes what is inside the mind with data collected from EEG (Electroencephalography) recording.
Out of Herb’s garden, there is a conversational corner between father and son painting- Sam and Shingo Francis. Sam (1923-1994), the American abstract expressionism artist who recognized for uniquely apply negative space on abstract art. The exhibition presents a set of four pieces that wittily invited the audience to appreciate different areas of the canvas. Shingo brought two pieces to display along with his father’s work. Painted in grid composition with a majority of negative white space, the ‘Matrix,’ from Shingo is not just painting for him but a dialogue with his father art work – the ‘Untitled 1978.’ Even both works display in just a few step distance, but the creation is 40 years apart.
The Sacral, the renaissance architecture made from interwoven wire mesh, by Edoardo Tresoldi, interpreted hundreds of years old form of classic arches, columns, and domes with the modern material. With naked eyes, the depth of the structure was quite bland. However, while I’m walking with the lens, the Sacral miraculously provides perspective shifts, giving various angles vision.
The final room is an area of ‘Silence Dogood,’ projected animation by Jennifer Steinkamp, who was inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s electric theory, in his time the famous scientist sometime used Silene Dogood as his pen name for science publications. The animation was created from the movement of small ice particles that bounce back and forth across the clouds, causing static electricity to thunder. I was informed that particles and the lightning line in the animation are hand-drawn.
This work previously exhibited as ‘Winter Fountains’ at Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, USA. In 2017-2018, Jennifer and the team used 16 projectors to project the image to a half-circle dome that is approximately 4 meters in height, but this time was shown on a U-shaped wall. Let’s have a look.
At the end of the exhibition hall, there was a way to walk outside. The areas decorated with 3D graffiti images along with sculptures that have been modified to form Chinese characters, the word Ai, which means love. Visitors can pick up a straw to insert into the heart made of acrylic sheets. The work seems environmentally conscious but appears to use a lot of straws. I wonder how they would handle these? From the staff, this work will be displayed in the hotel after the exhibition.
More artwork with 30 meters size!
At first, I thought there is no more art left in the exhibition. The gigantic almost 30×30 meters size art piece is waiting outside the complex building. This work is considered one of the highlights of the Art Macao 2019. Let’s hunt the dragon together in Yangson Ma ‘s Dragon’s Footprints. Stay Tune
