Garden of Earthly Delights reimagined in hit Spanish art exhibition

Stephen Fry’s voiceovers helped make the children’s comedy Pocoyó famous on British television but now the creative brains behind the global hit has turned his attention to reimagining The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Half a millennium after Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece about the delights of pleasure and the price of sin, a new exhibition in Madrid has inspired 15 international artists to use painting, sound art, gifs, video and artificial intelligence to reinterpret the work.

David Cantolla, who has worked as a video artist with avant-garde art troupe La Fura dels Baus and is a founding partner of the Colección Solo art gallery, curated the exhibition with his partner Ana Gervás.

Queues of up to an hour have made it Spain’s must-see art show, rivalling the demand to see the works by Bosch and other famous artists in Madrid’s Prado Museum.

Cantolla, who is also an entrepreneur, won a Bafta in 2006 for Pocoyó, whose name was thought up by his daughter Vega.

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The Garden of Delights exhibition, which was five years in the making, is designed to “invite the public to live an experience that activates their imagination, that connects us to our time, that allows reflection and that … as Bosch also intended – opens threads of conversation,” Cantolla told i.

Mu Pan, a Chinese artist, styles his work on the collection of characters in Bosch’s original but shows a Chinese banquet in which Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Mao Zedong and Willy Wonka are dining.

Cassie McQuarter, an American artist, uses video games from the 90s with strong female characters battling it out on a lurid background.

The show ends with the digital triptych called Speculum, by the Dutch artistic group SMACK, which measures 4m x 7m. Huge cats are watched over by Isaac Newton and a flamingo with a satellite dish for a head.

Paradise is populated by Kurt Cobain and Batman while Hell is illustrated with burning cities, crucifixion, hanging and addiction.

Cantolla, who studied fine art, says he spends his days looking for new artistic talent.

“I spend all day discovering artists on the internet, reading graphic novels, comics and books of all kinds and playing video games, maybe that’s what influences me most,” he said.

The Garden of Earthly Delights Through the Works of Colección Solo, Matadero Madrid, until 27 February 27