Following in the Footsteps of Yan Yonghua: Couples Retreat Garden: Osmanthus Gallery is a Hybrid VR Painting™ by Dave Alber.
oil on canvas and panoramic VR technology
100 x 50 cm
2019
Is it memory
Or the power of sensual alertness in the present moment, which,
Like the tracks of the deer,
Draws the hunter deeper into the forest?
Standing in the Osmanthus Gallery,
The heart blooms with awareness of its own freedom, while
Sensual delight thrills at the fragrant moon of transpersonal memory.
Following in the Footsteps of Yan Yonghua: Couples Retreat Garden: Osmanthus Gallery is part of the exhibition Suzhou Gardens 360°.
Suzhou Gardens 360° takes the viewer on an immersive journey into the symbolism and emotional resonances of Suzhou’s famous gardens. The intent isn’t to simply reproduce the scenery in oil paint and VR technology, but to call upon our collective sympathetic capacities to re-invoke and build a dialogue with the inner world feelings that inform the garden aesthetic.
Exploring Couple’s Garden Retreat, for example… Tragedy struck the life of Qing Dynasty official Shen Bingcheng, taking away his family. However, after falling in love with the poet scholar Yan Yonghua, he rebuilt his life in the hermetic chamber of Suzhou’s Couple’s Garden Retreat. This exhibition of paintings explores the dynamic combination of dualities of yin/yang, husband/wife, and sun/moon in the context of a life renewed in a garden designed as a grand poetic metaphor for a shared life together. 360° panoramic VR paintings place the viewer/participant directly within a metaphorical and alchemical space where grief was transformed to joy.
