Garden of Earthly Delights: sensory installations at the Gropius Bau.

Garden of Earthly Delights is the current exhibition at Gropius Bau in Berlin and is comprised of many installation pieces by different artists. The works all relating to the Hieronymus Bosch triptych painting of the same name, painted in around 1490-1500. In the book, Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights by Hans Belting, Belting says that of all Bosch’s work, ‘none is more fascinating than the painting known as Garden of Earthly Delights – a work of which we do not even know the original title’[1]. From this, we can see why the gallery may have chosen this artwork to base their exhibition on since it is a painting that has inspired artists for many generations due to the mystery surrounding it and the iconography leaves a lot of things up for interpretation, much like the modern-day installations that are a part of the exhibition. Stephanie Rosenthal, director of Gropius Bau says that the exhibition ‘particularly looks into the garden as a site of extraordinary cultural significance and its political connotations today’[2] and talks about how climate change is a big part of why the exhibition was created, saying, ‘in our times of radical climate change, the garden can function as a poetic space for reflection, allowing to analyse the complex connections of a chaotic and increasingly precarious world’[3]. With this in mind, I am going to use three case studies to discuss how the installation pieces play on emotion and the senses to convey their messages to the audience.

Pteridophilia

Pteridophilia is the first installation piece I will be discussing. The phrase is coined by Bo to describe the acts that are displayed in his videos of the same name which are what is being displayed; it means literally, love of ferns. The videos show twelve queer Taiwanese men having intimate relations with ferns. The installation is displayed in a room with four TV screens all facing inwardly, creating a space in the middle of them where potted fern plants are neatly placed in rows (fig. 1). The gaps in between the plants allow for viewers to walk, stand or sit amongst them and watch the videos that are facing them in any direction. The screens are playing four different videos but generally showing variations of the same thing, naked men being intimate with ferns (fig. 2). The predominant message and motive behind the installation of about climate change and how we as humans do and should have a relationship with nature and the environment. Bo supports this by saying, ‘it’s very important that we develop truly intimate relations with other species’[4]. If we keep destroying the earth, we are not only denying other species but ourselves the ability to survive on it. Bo is attempting to create and make the audience see a different relationship between man and nature. Bo himself says:

the world we (humans) have built is collapsing. We are killing other species and we will eventually kill ourselves if we do not change the way we live fast enough. […] The first step is to get closer to plants. This is the fundamental reason why I decided to create Pteridophilia.[5]

This connects well to the aim of the whole exhibition as outlined by Rosenthal as Bo’s work is tackling the topic of climate change and trying to put across a message form his political standpoint to instigate change.

This installation uses a lot of the senses in order to convey Bo’s message and invoke emotion from the audience. Bo encourages the audience to use not only sight as a lot of art pieces would use as the primary sense but also hearing, touch and smell as the videos have sound and the ferns in the centre are arguably there to be touched by the viewers as they walk amongst them and give off their own scents. This then makes the installation one that stimulates the audience in several different ways and gets in touch with most of their senses. It also leads the audience to make connections with the performers they see on screen as they are touching the ferns at the same time as watching the people on screen touch them, making it easier to understand why they find such pleasure in nature as well as Bo’s message of forming relationships with species other than our own. It is inviting the audience to do this in a physical way and makes connections in the audience’s minds between them, the performers and nature which strengthens the meaning of the whole work. The museum website says the men in the videos ‘encounter the plants not as mere objects, but as responsive beings, sensitising us to a more caring and equal treatment of nature’[6] which describes this well by suggesting that we see a more caring treatment in the videos and then are encouraged to physically recreate it right there which opens us up to doing the same thing outside of the exhibition space. Whilst the audience is not being encouraged to have intimate relations with the plants, just the act of physically touching them still creates these connections.

With all my Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever

With all my Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever is another installation piece that is a part of the exhibition. It is by Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama and is comprised of two very large tulips in the centre of a room, covered floor to ceiling in multi-coloured polka dots. The tulips are no exception and are also covered in the spots (fig. 3). The dots allow you to get fully immersed in the world of the artist as you don’t feel as if you’re standing in a room in a museum since there is no distinction between the walls, floor and ceiling, it is one big expansive space which could be described as overwhelming. The tulips are made of plastic – nothing about the installation is natural and yet it is trying to provide a commentary about nature and the environment. Commenting on her motive behind making the installation a part of the exhibition, Kusama says, ‘our earth is like one little polka dot, among millions of other celestial bodies, one orb full of hatred and strife amid the peaceful, silent spheres. Let’s you and I change all of that and make this world a new garden of Eden’[7] which relates directly to the Bosch painting in its representation of the Garden of Eden (fig. 4) and the theme of the exhibition. The use of dots seems to be a common theme in Kusama’s work with many of her other pieces being covered in them as well. Gwendolyn Foster in her article, Self-Stylization and Performativity in the Work of Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama and Mariko Mori, explains this by commenting on Kusama’s mental health and the fact she suffers from a mental illness which she admitted herself into an institution for[8]. Foster says:

Though it’s not clear exactly what illness [Kusama] suffers, it appears to have had an obsessive-compulsive behavioural component. […] An urge towards obsessional repetitive acts of painting webs, nets and dots, and sewing seemingly endless phallic pillows into sculptures—turning her obsessions into artwork that propels the viewer into a participating relationship with Kusama’s view of the world.[9]

This supports the idea of being transported and immersed in the world of Kusama whether this is done purposely or simply just as a result of how she views the world.

Following on from this, this overwhelming feeling the viewer gets when walking into the space, I would argue, is due to the way in which the work plays with the audience’s sense of sight. Sight could be considered the most obvious way in which art appeals to the senses as most art is purely a visual experience, however Kusama’s piece here takes it one step further and more extreme. Once you enter the room, you are immediately confronted with bright and extremely clean white background, festooned with hundreds of coloured spots – something you do not see in an average, real world setting. The size of the two tulips in the centre of the room and the brightness of the colours and untainted cleanliness of the harsh white background I would suggest is perhaps overstimulating to the eye and so leads the audience to feel as if they are stepping into a different world, something unnatural and strange. Foster supports this idea by commenting on the fact that Kusama is inviting the audience into her world; she says, ‘Kusama engages us in a limitless universe of her/our own making, one where infinity is possibly quite attainable through repetitive acts inscribed across the self’[10]. Therefore, we can see how Kusama also uses sensory techniques to invite the audience in and create a space in which her and her message and vision are present.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens

Homo Sapiens Sapiens is the final piece I will be discussing by Pipilotti Rist. This work is in the form of a video in which we see two females, meant to represent Eve, exploring the Garden of Eden and everything it has to offer (fig. 5). The women explore the garden using their bodies and can be seen squashing fruits with their feet and touching other plants and fruit to their naked bodies. The museum website describes this by saying, ‘naked and with all their senses, two Eves discover this Garden of Eden’[11]. The film has a surrealist feel to it with filters and strange angles being added to distort the images and colours being made brighter and more vivid. In an interview with Jane Harris, Rist said she does this in a lot of her work because ‘the world is psychedelic. And I think that the world is even more colourful than I have ever been’[12] and so she wants to recreate this ‘reality’ in her videos even if it may seem unnatural to watch. The audience is encouraged to lie down to watch the video as it is played on a screen on the ceiling in a dark room (fig. 6). Rist discussed her reasoning for this in an interview with Artspace by saying, ‘with my exhibitions I want to provide a stage and let the visitors become the actors. Oftentimes I only slightly change their body positions, free them of the permanent fight against gravity […]. Such fine alterations have enormous influences on our capacity for contemplation’[13] which suggests that she does this in order for the audience to view her work not only how she wants to view it but open their minds to more possibilities about the meaning behind her work.

Whilst it is difficult to discern what the message and meaning behind this work is, Rist has said that whilst her work usually starts off being about her personal experiences, her pieces often then develop into more of a social commentary and adopt other meanings within a social context[14] so it is likely that this is what happened with Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Rist has also said about her work:

[my work is about utopian spaces], in my work I imagine a lot of new possible ways of being: I imagine that life would be better if we didn’t have only two genders, but perhaps twenty different ones, so that they wouldn’t be so important or the source of so much pain. I imagine that women could have the same space and authority as men.[15]

From this and the common theme of her work being feminist ideals of a powerful woman, safe spaces for women and ideal ‘utopian’ places where the world is in harmony, we can infer that Homo Sapiens Sapiens also follows this same theme. Here, the garden is a safe space for these Eves, a place where they are expressing themselves and exploring freely their environment and their sexualities without worries or judgement and that is the meaning behind the video and its purpose – to show this harmonious representation of earth in the form of a garden or the Garden of Eden.

From a sensory point of view, here Rist is using both extremely stimulating visual imagery and sound to manipulate the audience into feeling a certain way. The viewers are moved into a vulnerable position of not only laying down but having these women being represented as above and/or on top of them. This supports this idea of Rist wanting to portray powerful women in her work as she is putting them literally above everyone who is watching them, regardless of their gender, raising them up to being more than objects of desire being gazed upon. The vivid, bright and almost unnatural colours and kaleidoscopic style of images being shown are paired with a calming, yet slightly unnerving backing track of instrumental music, stimulating both the audience’s sense of hearing and sight and enveloping them into this utopian garden space. As the room is dark and silent apart from the music, all the audience has to focus on is the video and the backing track and so they are completely consumed by it and do not have a lot of choice but to be hypnotised by the images and focus closely on them. Therefore, as with the other two installations I have mentioned, I would argue that Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a sensory exhibit as it is not just something to stand and look at but something that is actively using the senses and appealing to them to draw people in and make them focus on what is going on.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the exhibition Garden of Earthly Delights is comprised of several installation pieces which play on the senses to get their messages across and create emotion in their audiences. Despite the many different ways the artists do this and the different senses they appeal to, there are common themes that connect each of them together such as their appealing and eye-catching visuals and their messages of social change and context as well as the obvious link of the garden in its many different forms.

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Illustrations

Figure 1 - Pteridophilia installation by Zheng Bo displayed in Gropius Bau, Berlin. Personal photograph 7th Nov. 2019.

Figure 2 - Still from Pteridophilia 2. Zheng Bo. 2018. Displayed at Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany.

Figure 3 – For All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever installation by Yayoi Kusama in Gropius Bau. Personal photograph 7th Nov. 2019.

Figure 4 - Section from Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, c.1490-1500. Oil on panel. 220 x 389 cm. Madrid, Spain

Figure 5 - Still from Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Pipilottti Rist. 2005. Displayed at Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany.

Figure 6 - Homo Sapiens Sapiens installation by Pipilotti Rist in Gropius Bau. Taken from Gropius Bau website.

Bibliography

Belting, Hans. Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights. Prestel; reprint edition 1st March. 2006. Print.

Foster, Gwendolyn. “Self-Stylization and Performativity in the Work of Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama and Mariko Mori”, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 27:4 (2010): 267-275. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 18th Jan. 2020.

“Further Reading”, Gropius Bau, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media [n.d]. Web. 6th Jan. 2020. https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/gropiusbau/programm/2019/garten-der-irdischen-freuden/wandtexte.html

Harris, Jane. “Psychedelic, Baby: An Interview with Pipilotti Rist”, Art Journal, 59:4 (2000): 68-79. JSTOR. Web. 19th Jan. 2020.

Pipilotti Rist, interview with Artspace editors, Artspace, 22nd October 2016. Web. 6th Jan 2020. https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/book_report/pipilotti-rist-phaidon-interview-54294

Pound, Cath. “Yayoi Kusama’s extraordinary survival story”, BBC, BBC [26th September 2018]. Web. 19th Jan. 2020. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180925-yayoi-kusamas-extraordinary-survival-story

Stephanie Rosenthal, Garten der Irdischen Freuden: Exhibtion Catalogue. Silvana Editoriale; 1st edition. 2019. Print.

Zheng Bo, interview with Cezar Aaron, My Art Guides, 15th October 2019. Web. 5th Jan 2020. https://myartguides.com/interviews/delfina-foundations-interviews-series-bo-zheng/

[1] Hans Belting, Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights (Prestel; reprint edition 1st March. 2006) 9. [2] Stephanie Rosenthal, Garten der Irdischen Freuden: Exhibtion Catalogue (Silvana Editoriale; 1st edition. 2019) 8. [3] Rosenthal, Garten der Irdischen Freuden: Exhibtion Catalogue. 8. [4] Zheng Bo, interview with Cezar Aaron, My Art Guides, 15th October 2019. [5] Zheng Bo quoted in Stephanie Rosenthal, Garten der Irdischen Freuden: Exhibtion Catalogue. 58. [6] “Further Reading”, Gropius Bau, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media [n.d] [7] Yayoi Kusama quoted in Stephanie Rosenthal, Garten der Irdischen Freuden: Exhibtion Catalogue. 373. [8] Cath Pound “Yayoi Kusama’s extraordinary survival story”, BBC, BBC [26th September 2018] [9] Gwendolyn Foster, “Self-Stylization and Performativity in the Work of Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama and Mariko Mori”, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 27:4 (2010): 272 [10] Foster, “Self-Stylization and Performativity in the Work of Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama and Mariko Mori”. 273 [11] “Further Reading” [12] Jane Harris, “Psychedelic, Baby: An Interview with Pipilotti Rist”, Art Journal, 59:4 (2000): 79 [13] Pipilotti Rist, interview with Artspace editors, Artspace, 22nd October 2016 [14] Harris, “Psychedelic, Baby: An Interview with Pipilotti Rist” 77 [15] Pipilotti Rist, interview with Artspace editors