Impossible Garden (old)

An Impossible Garden at the Modernist Ruin (Copy)

Installation at Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome

An Impossible Garden at the Modernist Ruin (Copy)

Installation at Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome

An Impossible Garden at the Modernist Ruin (Copy)

Installation at Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome

An Impossible Garden at the Modernist Ruin (Copy)

Installation at Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome

Pars Una Hic et Nunc Perpetuo Impossibile Hortum (Copy)

2014-15
Oil, charcoal, chalk and cold wax paste on cotton covered board
244 x 498 cm in 4 panels

Partibus Unum et Duo et Tria Esse de Praesenti et in Horto Sempiterno (Part I) (Copy)

2015
Oil, charcoal, chalk, beeswax encaustic and cold wax paste on cotton and hessian covered board
152.5 x 550 cm in 9 panels

Partibus Unum et Duo et Tria Esse de Praesenti et in Horto Sempiterno (Part II) (Copy)

2015
Oil, charcoal, chalk, beeswax encaustic and cold wax paste on cotton and hessian covered board
152.5 x 550 cm in 9 panels

Partibus Unum et Duo et Tria Esse de Praesenti et in Horto Sempiterno (Part III) (Copy)

2015
Oil, charcoal, chalk, beeswax encaustic and cold wax paste on cotton and hessian covered board
152.5 x 550 cm in 9 panels

Tree and Bird in Livia's Garden (Copy)

2015
Oil and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered board
86.5 x 61 cm

Monkey in Window (after Breugel) (Copy)

2015
Oil and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered board
61 x 46 cm

Weeds at the Foot of the Wall, Livia's Garden circa 20 BC (Copy)

2014
Oil, charcoal, and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered board
152.5 x 108 cm

Alcedines: an saepe et diu caput coloribus cum magna avis rostro acutus (Copy)

2014
Oil, charcoal and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered boards
152.5 x 244 cm in 4 panels

Bibentes in Agrum Romanum Hortus (Copy)

2015
Oil and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered board
46 x 61 cm

Study for Our St Francis (after Giotto) (Copy)

2013
Oil, pencil and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered board
35.5 x 25.5 cm

Study for Boy Up Tree (after Giotto) (Copy)

2013
Oil, pencil and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered board
61 x 50 cm

Tree and Two Birds in Livia's Garden (Copy)

2015
Oil, pencil and beeswax paste on cotton covered board
86.5 x 61 cm

Our Garden of Earthly Delights (after Bosch) (Copy)

2013
Oil, charcoal and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered boards
183 x 305 cm in 3 panels

Bird with Fruit circa 20 BC (Copy)

2015
Oil, charcoal and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered board
46 x 61 cm

Chaos of Super-Thinking at the Modernist Ruin (Copy)

2015
Oil, chalk and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered boards
122 x 244 cm

Studium ad Turrim Babel (post Breugel) (Copy)

2015
Oil, and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered board
50 x 35.5 cm

Quia Impossibile Study Quercu Garden (Copy)

2015
Oil, and beeswax encaustic on cotton covered board
50 x 35.5 cm

Galleria Alessandra Bonomo
Via del Gesù, 62-00186 Roma
www.bonomogallery.com

20 March - 31 May 2015

An Impossible Garden at the Modernist Ruin
also known as
The Impossible Garden and the Chaos of Super-Thinking

"One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I didn’t agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings." Flann O’Brien (from At Swim-Two-Birds, Ireland 1939)

Press Release

"Everything is forcing itself upon me, I no longer have to think about it, everything comes to meet me, and the whole gigantic kingdom becomes so simple that I can see at once the answer to the most difficult problems. If only I could communicate the insight and joy to someone, but it is not possible." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italy 1786

The Impossible Garden is a series of works in oil, charcoal, chalk-line and beeswax encaustic. They are all made in response to an ancient trompe l'oeil fresco from a villa built in the late 1st Century BC for Caesar Augustus' wife Livia. The Garden di Livia. This original rendering of a Roman garden was designed to cool the senses in a semi-subterranean dining space during the heat of the Roman summer. What soon becomes apparent in looking at this original painting are the inconsistencies - obviously the flat plane is not a real garden but a simulacrum - but trees also blossom and fruit simultaneously, branches both bow to cooling breezes and are trapped in the hot stillness of a stifling summer afternoon, and those flittering birds are as still as death.

The Modernist Ruin paintings refer to St Peter's Seminary, a disused Roman Catholic seminary near Cardross in Scotland. Built in 1961 it has been described by the international architecture conservation organisation as a modern building of world significance. It is one of only 42 post-war buildings in Scotland to be listed at Category A, the highest level of protection for a building of special architectural or historic interest. It has been abandoned since the end of the 1980s, and is currently in a ruinous state.

There are now plans to restore part of the building to be used as an arts centre whilst the rest of the site will be opened to the public to be viewed as the first ever Modernist Ruin.