The Garden of Contemporary Delights
2024
acrylic on canvas
canvas dimensions: 228.5 x 193cm / 90” x 76” (central panel), 228.5 x 96.5cm / 90” x 38” (outer panels)
overall dimensions: 228.5 x 386cm / 90” x 152”
The Golden Garden of Contemporary Delights
2024
gold-leaf, acrylic and pencil on canvas
canvas dimensions: 203.5 x 183cm / 80″ x 72″ (central panel), 203.5 x 91.5cm / 80″ x 36″ (outer panels)
overall dimensions: 203.5 x 366cm / 80″ x 144”
Painted in 2024, The Garden of Contemporary Delights is a searingly relevant painting loosely inspired by the Bosch masterpiece in the Prado. Filled with significant detail, it is a vast panorama of the challenges of contemporary life conceived as a reinterpretation of the subjects of Creation, Original Sin, The Garden of Eden, the pleasures of the flesh, and Hell found in the original, with every detail different.
The left hand section of the panel has Adam and Eve sharing Eden with the building blocks of life, DNA, life evolving in fantastical ways from God’s first spark, with references to scientific concepts, Talmudic mysticism and the birth of art.
The central section sees technology and screens overtaking the pleasures of the flesh, the sexual license of the original elaborated to include the prevalence of drugs and other forms of addiction in modern life. At the centre is a mesmerising stampede of species who are now extinct such as the dinosaur, dodo, mammoth, sabre toothed tiger and hundreds of other real and invented life forms brought back to life in this art work. Within the composition are scores of references to Breuer-Weil’s sculptures that come to life here, beside buildings that speak of the vast new possibilities of science. The fantastical buildings in the original are transformed into iconic modern buildings such as the Burj Khalifa, Sydney Opera House, Guggenheim Museum, Petronas Towers and other triumphs of modern architecture.
The third panel sees Breuer-Weil replace the tortures in the original with modern horrors, including the threat of nuclear war, the Holocaust, global terrorism, and the dangers of ideologies impacting contemporary history. The glass sphere in the original is placed on the reverse of the outer doors of the triptych, here transformed into an unforgettable image of global warming as cracks appear in the glass sphere filled with emissions.
