ReZilience

Resilience is that ineffable quality that allow some people to be knocked down by life and to come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes.

Resilience. The capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress.

With these two dictionary definitions, one is welcome to ReZilience, the latest quarterly exhibition at Kate Bergdorf’s cosy Berg gallery, located overhead of her home region, Nordan om Jorden.

Both of these definitions can be applied to those of us who use Second Life; the first being applicable when Things Go Wrong for often inexplicable reasons, while the second is more directly applicable to our avatars. While the days of teleporting from A to B and finding shoes, hair, and other attachment trailing from our posteriors as a bizarre tail have long passed, for those who wear mesh, life can be full of random bodily and clothing malfunctions which we stalwartly accept because “it’s Second Life”. And thus the theme of the exhibition is set.

ReZilience is a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek look at what can unexpectedly happen when we log-in to SL, only to find our mesh body rotated 90 degrees and lying horizontally through our (alpha wearing) form, or when we teleport somewhere, only to appear to others as if our heads and bodies are going through a trial separation from one another, and so on.

Tutsy Navarathna, perhaps best know for his marvellous award-winning machinima, is the artist behind the pieces on display,  and he presents a series of pieces combining images captured in-world with paintings and drawing to offers a series of delightful shots celebrating bodily mishaps in Second Life, each with its own delightful caption edged with a wicked sense of humour and, in places, underlined with what might a a subtle social comment on matters of identity – such as appears to be the case with Elle n’a jamais cache utiliser la chirurgie esthetique pour conserver une plastique de reve

With just twelve pieces on display, this is not an extensive exhibit, but it doesn’t have to be; the wry humour is more than adequately presented, and the intimate space provided by Kate’s little gallery space is the ideal environment in which to present the pieces. Rezilience will remain open to visitors through until March 31st, 2015.

Related Links

• Berg Gallery SLurl (Rated: Moderate)