Solo Arte, the open-air gallery space for art and culture designed by TerryGold, and originally operating as the Melania Gallery, has a new home in Second Life. To mark its re-opening, it is featuring a dual display of 2D art and sculptures by Terrygold and Mistero Hifeng respectively.
The gallery design is very pleasing to the eye, presenting a natural environment well suited to display art both indoors and outdoors, with an emphasis on the latter. A central canal dissects the setting with open-air park spaces, courtyards, and cobbled streets on either side, together with a gallery building on one side of the canal, and a salsa dance club and a bar on the other, all offering indoor spaces where art can be displayed. Bridges span the waters of the canal to link things together, and the exhibition spaces are surrounded by the low façade of other buildings, giving it the look and feel of an arts district within a much larger conurbation.
For this exhibition, Mistero has placed his familiar sculptures out along the footpaths, sitting on benches or walls or on the grass of the little park areas. The presence of many of them lends a feeling that the place alive with people, giving it a warm feel. Only the larger figures rising from the waters of the canal, and those sitting atop a high arch remind us that this is an art display.
Terry’s work, presented in its evocative monochrome style for the most part, is almost entirely displayed within the various buildings. This is a clever, as entering / leaving the gallery, etc., when viewing her art provides a very natural division between her art and Mistero’s, allowing both to be appreciated and enjoyed without and visual overlap.
As Solo Arte occupies a portion of a region, some viewers may not automatically adopt the parcel windlight – Breakwave Building Light (if installed). The gallery notes also recommend enabling Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) and Shadows (both via Preferences > Graphics.
To be honest, while enabling shadows does add depth to the outdoors elements of the venue (obviously), foregoing them on the grounds of system performance should not unduly detract from a visit (although I would recommend having ALM enabled). Similarly, if you do not have the recommended windlight available in your viewer, this also shouldn’t detract from a visit.
The exhibition will run through until the end of June, 2017.
SLurl Details
- Solo Arte (Casvian Caye, rated: Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 