Bamboo’s Mindstorm in Second Life

Currently open at Gallery 3 of Mareea Farrasco’s MAGOLand is Mindstorm, an exhibition of art by Bamboo Barnes which opened on October 6th, 2021.

Hailing from Japan, Bamboo is, as I’ve frequently noted, one of the most vibrant, evocative, provocative, and emotive artists displaying her work in Second Life. She is also an artist unafraid of plumbing the depth of emotion and introspection – and this is again true with Mindstorm, which presents a series of images she has been working on for “a few years”.

The best way to describe this exhibition is to perhaps use Bamboo’s own words:

When you are feeling low, isolated, misunderstood.
Look at your disturbed soul pretending it never hurts,
The ocean of the pain roar to sweep all the goodness from you so you can feel the bottom.
Like the wind and the tide, there are no keys to open the sea, keep you face over the surface to keep the breath.
When the sun is up your skin is dry, start feel it’s in the past, then life goes on, there’s another day.
Don’t know what will come tomorrow, beneath the surface there is mindstorm.

Bamboo Barnes, describing Mindstorm

Presented in Bamboo’s familiar bold colours, the 16 images within the exhibit are joined by a number of 3rd part 3D pieces she has also textured, which together offer very visual statements on state-of-mind / relationships, which through presentation and colour emphasis speak loudly to mood and feelings.

As introspective pieces, these might be seen – not incorrectly – as reflections of Bamboo’s moods. Again, and as I’ve note before, her work is strongly bound with her mood, whether drawn directly from the emotions of life or as a result of the music to which she is listening while creating a piece. However, and as her own notes for the exhibition state, these are pieces to which anyone who has weathered feelings of isolation – not so much as a result of the on-going pandemic, but due to circumstances of life such as the ending of a relationship or an (obtuse?) misunderstanding directed towards you or the hurt inflected by the actions or words of another, and so on –  can identify.

I’m not sure how long Mindstorm is set to run, but I do recommend it as an exhibition worthy of seeing.

SLurl Details

Please use the teleport disk from the landing point below to reach the gallery.

• Mindstorm, IMAGO Gallery 3 (Broken Arrow, rated Moderate)