A BOTANICAL UNIVERSE
01 Mar 2017
As Australia roles over into Autumn, other parts of the world are embracing the onset of spring. An interactive ‘digital garden’ in Shanghai celebrates with an ever-changing expression of spring blooms.
Miguel Chevalier has created three monumental installations, especially for the Jing An Kerry Centre in Shanghai, that are an ode to nature, announcing and celebrating the arrival of spring. Digital Water Lilies is a new site-specific virtual interactive garden that comes alive after sunset on the piazza of the Jing An Kerry Centre, next to the former house of Chairman Mao. A lush parterre of flowers and different varieties of luminescent plants, the virtual array of blossoms delicately respond to the interaction of guests.
For Digital Water Lilies, Miguel Chevalier includes varieties of flowers rich with symbolism and good auspices during the spring in China, such as African lilies, orchids, camellias and peach tree flowers. Flowers appear randomly, come to full blossom and fade away, only to be reborn again. The garden renews itself time after time, constantly changing and flourishing into its summer glory. As visitors walk around the 600m² ‘flower carpet’, the garden senses and shifts around them, with the flowers opening up new paths of discovery. As a fresh form of ‘digital impressionism’, the title and the cosmic sensibility of the work pay homage to Monet and his research on light, seasons and nature.
The second installation, Trans-Natures transforms the Jing An Kerry Centre tunnel into a lush 360-degree garden of mysterious arborescence, hiding and revealing flowers which generate a symphony of luminescent forms and colours. Trans-Natures announces the revival of nature; the stationary frescos on the walls are accompanied by four interactive virtual flowerbeds projected on the ground, thus creating a fully immersive sensation.
The last installation, Dreamed Gardens transforms two of the glass bridges at the Jing An Kerry Centre into huge coloured stained glass windows, rich with translucent imagery. During the day, the soft light and vibrancy of colour creates a magical environment reflected on the floor and ceiling, visually embracing visitors.
Placing visitors at the heart of a reinvented nature, Miguel Chevalier’s immersive environments aim to create an intriguing and poetic botanical universe, a place between dreams and reality. His installations suggest a new poetic relationship between art and vegetation, and attempt to recreate the conditions of symbiosis between humankind and this reinvented nature.
