'Desire', one of a series of nine images on exhibit.

BEIJING-based multidisciplinary artist Miao Xiaochun (b. 1964) will showcase new works in a solo exhibition, entitled "Miao Xiaochun: Microcosm", which opens at Osage Singapore today.

Osage is an international gallery group with major exhibition spaces in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore. It represents some of the most outstanding artists in Asia and works closely with a variety of internationally respected curators, critics and art historians to present and promote exhibitions that address fundamental global issues.

In his newest work, Microcosm Chinese artist Miao Xiaochun re-imagines Hieronymus Bosch’s famous 15th century masterpiece, "The Garden of Earthly Delights".

Bosch’s triptych is one of the world’s most wildly extravagant examples of unbridled imagination. On the left wing we see paradise, in the centre mankind pursuing earthly pleasures, and on the right wing hell.

In his version, Miao has recreated each of these three panels using the original structure of the composition but has populated it with his own motifs and characters. Then, using three dimensional software, Miao looks past the straightforward image which is presented in the front view of each section in order to see that which lies beyond.

In his work, Miao shows us what we might see if we were standing firmly on the earth and aware of the life around us yet able to look out into paradise, or by glancing the other way, into the fiery torments of hell. More than this, he also shows us what we might see if we were in paradise and able to look across the expanse of earth to his vision of hell beyond, and vice versa.

His work does not represent each of these three elements separately in isolation from one another but as part of a continuum. The digital technology that Miao employs in his work also suggests a melding of time and distance, across which he can reflect critically on Bosch’s Renaissance masterpiece with uncanny clarity and with mathematical precision.

In his work Miao presents a way of “digging into the roots of mysteries belonging to other times”. Using a modern language of modern forms, he reinterprets the minute details of Bosch’s work, many of which are impenetrable to modern understanding, in order to create a new set of mysteries and to express his views about the world and his understanding of existence and death. Miao’s work is no mere contemporary copy of Bosch. It is a highly individual work imbued with subjective experience. In this series of nine images, numbers two through eight all relate spatially to one or more of the three panels of Hieronymus Bosch. But image one and image nine are entirely from Miao’s own imagination. In both of these images, Miao looks outside and beyond the picture framed by Bosch to consider what existed before the beginning and after the end.

The eighth panel of Miao Xiaochun’s new work, "Microcosm". In this panel, we see a reworking of Bosch’s presentation of "Hell in The Garden of Earthly Delights", the triptych that Miao references in his new work.

"Miao Xiaochun: Microcosm" runs through 15 October 2008 at Osage Singapore. Please visit www.osagegallery.com for more information.