Garden Eden by Jens Masmann

An imaginary Garden Eden

Garden Eden

"The idea of a place called paradise is the simulation of an ideal status. A simulation with traces of reality to give the audience the possibility to relate to the narration. This ideal status does not make sense without its potential to collapse, without its predicted epic fail."

The project "Garden Eden" examines the idea of an ideal place and the procedure promoting the failure of this construction a.k.a. the expulsion from paradise.

Against the backdrop of a worldwide collapse of the principle of a constant improvement in the coexistence of human kind "Garden Eden" is trying to find a visual code for describing a paradisaic ideal place to serve as an escapist shelter; the work is meant as a simulation of a Garden Eden, including the second part of this narration: the expulsion, the loss of the ideal place. Garden Eden's visual language is syncretistic and so is the selection of the pictured anecdotic motifs. The imagery takes references from scriptural narration around the place called Paradise, but also from secular ideas of an ethic set of values.

For the visualisation I playfully apply clichés, kitsch and hyper emotionalised motifs and fictitious settings spiced with traces of reality to make the narration emotionally readable.

The book's linear pattern of narration is the framework for the stream of the anecdotic single pictures, including varying visual interpretations of repetitive situations - like e.g. picking the apple - relating to archetypal images in our visual memory. This mix of pattern and syncopes then forms the storyline of Garden Eden, which towards the end steps back and introduces another layer of narration, the camera as an omniscient, superior agent.