Day: December 13, 2022

Update: December 15th: Aneli has announced the exhibitions below will be the last for La Maison d’Aneli

Here I am at the end of my adventure as a gallery owner, of course I will stay on Second Life as a simple artist … I thank all the people who accompanied me …. what a beautiful adventure we have shared, more than twelve years with an exhibition per month, and you always there. Long live creation!

– From a note sent out by Aneli Abeyante

The exhibition below will remain open through to January 14th, 2023. Aneli also notes that the La Maison d’Aneli group will remain open for people to share information on their artistic events and exhibitions.  

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December 14th, 2022 sees the official opening of five new exhibitions to see out the year at La Maison d’Aneli, curated by Aneli Abeyante. Produced and presented by five artists with highly individual skills and outlook, they present an intriguing mix that can engaging, amuse, possibly confuse, and provoke – and all of which are now available for viewing ahead of the formal opening.

Before going into specifics, when visiting all of these exhibitions, do make sure you have Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled in your viewer (Preferences → Graphics → make sure Advanced Lighting Model is checked); although shadows do not have to also be enabled, so you can set the drop-down to No Shadows to reduce the rendering load. Also note also that this piece includes SLurls for teleporting directly to each exhibition.

Yann Gyro (sempiternel) is an artist whose work I do not recall having come across before, so his 3D installation at La Masion d’Aneli came as a new experience for me, being a piece I had difficultly in interpreting. Predominantly greyscale / black-and-white in nature, it appears to comprise multiple elements which at first seem to have no connection: a bridge wit water running over it and a broken egg below; black snow falling from a white sky, a series of heads in various stages of being drawn, a female head gazing upwards through a hail of falling musical notes and with a starscape and astronaut floating within, a map of the world formed by irregular blocks mounted on an irregular grid, and so on. Footsteps on the ground provide a guide to exploring the installation – and should be followed. But how might it be interpreted?

I eventually concluded this is a piece about finding balance. That on the one hand we have been given the gifts of evolution, creativity and the power to shape our own future (symbolised by the evolving heads, the musical notes falling from the sky; the dream of space travel an our quest to understand the cosmos contained within the female head; and the figure rising within the double helix); whilst on the other, those same gifts can result in environmental and physical destruction (the falling black snow; the shattering bridge and broken egg; the flower in the bell jar). Thus comes the suggestion that should we fail to balance these two sides in the manner of a gyroscope, they we will inevitably wobble, falter, and fail to keep to the true path of our potential.

ZackHerrMann, meanwhile, presents a further chapter in the life of his alter-ego Linda Cluster in celebration of art and music, using the virtual immersion of Second Life to recreate his physical world works representing Linda Cluster to give them greater depth and visual appeal.

Vibrant in their use of colour, animations and sue of geometry and symmetry, be aware that some of the surfaces within this installation are media-enabled, so be sure to click the “movie camera” icon in the top right of the viewer window to make sure media is enabled (you do not need to have the audio stream enabled, as this applies to the gallery as a whole (unless to want to).

Drawing is above all my favourite discipline, because everything starts from drawing. It’s the idea, it’s the mood, it’s the choice, and all artistic work begins with a drawing. For me, drawing expresses the gift of self, communicating the sensitivity, character, and sentiment of the individual. 

– Thanos Runner

Using his own words is perhaps the best way to introduce Livlic Ateliers by Thanos Runner. A multi-talented artist who prefers to focus on the human body and produce portraits of those he encounters through the medium of drawing rather than painting or digital composition.

His work is utterly captivating in the manner in which he captures his subjects and brings to the fore the beauty which can be called forth through the use of graphite lines on what paper by the skilled hand. At the same time his offers a richness of dialogue on the human form through his coloured images as they celebrate the human body.

Located in northern Tuscany, the Apuan Alps are renown for their  Carrara marble, the most quarried marble it the world and used since Roman times for monumental sculpture and in architecture, but which today sees much of the 9 million tonnes quarried annually devoted to the production of toothpaste – and in the process is devastating the mountains at an accelerated rate.

As a native of the region, Onceagain (Manoji Yachvili) presents Cave Hominem, a series of photographs of the quarrying operations as a pictorial diary of the destruction being wrought for Second Life users to absorb. Offered in monochrome shading which enhances the rude damage being wrought on a daily basis – damage which she notes has led to visible changes in the look of mountains from her home – and set within an environment reflective of that encountered within the quarries themselves, this is an exhibition encompassing environmental damage we all too willingly inflict on the world around us which rings out as loudly as the roar, clang and bang of the instruments and tools of destruction used to wreck the Apuans and lay claim to their rock.

With As Above, So Below, Traci Ultsch complete the circle of exhibitions by presenting an installation that is left open to interpretation in a manner similar to that of Yann Gyro’s at the top of this article. It is also a piece where, again, having ALM enabled is absolutely essential (otherwise all you’ll see is the inside of a white cube!). Presented in monochrome, eye-pipingly visual (perhaps literally so in the case of the main image?) I am at a loss to describe this work – so I’ll instead urge you to go see it for yourself, together with the other four exhibits herein reviewed.

The official opening for all five exhibitions will take place at 12:30 SLT on Wednesday, December 14th, 2022, with music provided by Traci Ultsch.

SLurl Details

• La Maison d’Aneli (Virtual Holland, rated Moderate)