The Garden of Earthly Delights

Sophie Birch, Gabriella Boyd, Anthony Cudahy, Sarah Esme Harrison, Volker Hüller, Hettie Inniss, Matthew Day Jackson, Jochem Mestriner, Francesca Mollett, Fischer Mustin, Ken D. Resseger, Mosie Romney, Kiki Wang, Shiwen Wang, Georg Wilson

Grimm is pleased to present a group exhibition in New York this summer inspired by the iconic painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490 - 1500) by Hieronymus Bosch.

The exhibition hinges around the ideas of natural beauty, pleasure, and our environment. Responding to the bucolic beauty of Eden, the surreal madness of hell, and the suspended time before man, this show invites viewers to explore the strange, layered world Bosch so masterfully created.

The Garden of Earthly Delights brings together a group of contemporary artists who reflect not only on nature's forms but also the moments between the real and imagined. Some artists ruminate on the original work in the abstract, while others use known forms to connect these ideas to today.

Among the featured artists is Volker Huller, who sees Bosch's free-flowing, surreal figuration as deeply modern. "The figuration is so bizarre and imaginative that the underlying Christian symbolism recedes into the background," Huller says. "What's striking is how this sense of creative freedom contrasts sharply with the painting's unmistakable Renaissance craftsmanship. That tension is precisely what gives the work such a contemporary edge." He adds, "Honestly, a bunch of flowers stuck in the ass of a figure has quite a potential to comment on the present--it's surreal, absurd, and strangely fitting."

Anthony Cudahy reflects on Bosch's moralistic symbolism through a contemporary lens: "In the triptych, Bosch sets up so many consumption/defecation scenarios, culminating with the bird demon monster sitting on a throne in the right-most panel." "I'm interested in how the visionary art of a conservative true believer is now read as psychedelia with an entirely different set of associations." Cudahy's own contribution imagines a passive participant in a cycle of violence: "In my painting, the figure aloofly pushes along a spider to complete a sick chain of violence."

Georg Wilson approaches Bosch with a sensitivity to color and atmosphere: "When I think of Bosch's work I always first think of green, and therefore yellow," Wilson explains. "There is the zingy apple-green of The Garden of Earthly Delights, dark sludge-green in his foliage and undergrowth, and most memorably the deep sea-green turquoise of his skies." Drawing inspiration from a long-valued postcard of Saint Jerome, Wilson emphasizes how Bosch's world-building influences her own: "His scenes of many figures conjure the idea of a whole world, of sorrow and joy and strangeness all taking place simultaneously... not the heroic main character narrative but something stranger, off to one side."

The exhibition offers an opportunity to reengage with Bosch's enigmatic vision in The Garden of Earthly Delights, as contemporary artists reinterpret his iconic triptych, transforming it into a site for critical reflection and contemporary discourse.

With special thanks to all participating artists and their representing galleries.