Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Mu Pan ( (Taichung City, Taiwan, 1976) is viewed by the artist as a retrospective of 20 years’ work contained within a single painting. Visual ingredients common to many of Mu Pan’s narratives — from monkeys and turtles to hybrid Yakuza-sharks — appear in this triptych, which turns Bosch’s masterpiece into a profoundly personal tale. Cultural mash-up is a staple of Mu Pan’s art and, in this case, Christian imagery from The Book of Revelation is combined with Buddhist stories and references to historical figures. Witty allusions to Bosch’s original include anthropomorphic fruits and the central circuit reimagined as a Chinese round-table banquet. Mu Pan turns a critical eye to the present too, with environmental destruction expressed in the melting ice caps of the left-hand panel