Louvre’s Power of Water in Second Life

Open through October at the NovaOwl Sky Gallery is an exhibition of art by Louvre (Iamlouvre), a physical world artist who is now making her mark in Second Life, having joined (I believe) in 2021. This is the first time I have witnessed at exhibition of her work, and found it to be richly expressive.

Entitled Agua (the Spanish for “water”), this is an exhibition which fully embraces the space in which it displayed, Louvre demonstrating that as well as being a skilled artist, she has an innate sense of space and design, offering an environment that neatly folds itself around the exhibition’s theme, with the art split between the two levels of the gallery.

Water symbolises much more than an infinite space where we lose ourselves
when we look to sea. Water symbolises transformation, Life. All of us are water.  

– Louvre (Iamlouvre)

On the upper level, prints of her work are mounted on easels and walls, some of the latter backed by curtains of water tumbling to the floor below. On the lower level, this water spreads across a floor decorated with squares, some just below the surface other rising above it. All offer a sense of being stepping stones, encouraging visitors to make their way across them. These squares and mirrored by cubes and blocks climbing up the walls, the shimmering curtains of water visible in the gaps between them.

Close to the gallery entrance, sixteen cubes present sixteen paintings by Louvre, each painting repeated on all six faces of the cubes. Further back sit two larger cubes, each with an image of one of her paintings projected within it whilst further pieces are mounted on easels in an intentionally understated display, the entire level dominated by a single piece entitled Submarine.

Almost all of the paintings might be seen as portraits of a most unique kind. Few present a complete individual; rather they present images wherein the subjects are blurred or obscured, as if seen through a sheen of water, or with their subjects incomplete of cracked and fractured. In amongst them are paintings of a more abstract nature, but even these contain a sense of water-like fluidity and motion.

All of this is heavily suggestive of the opening lines of Louvre’s description for Agua, of water giving, being and transforming life. But there is more here as well, as Louvre goes on to note:

Water is also the tears produced by pain and sorrow. It is the force of the DANA flood that just hit my city. Washing away the homes of many neighbours and friends, taking within it their daily objects and their homes. Never in all my life have I been able to contemplate a greater disaster so closely. 

Water is the effort of my hands helping them, to the point of exhaustion, with water and more water.

– Louvre (Iamlouvre)

Storm Dana lashed Spain with torrential rain in early September, causing widespread flooding, particularly in the region of Castilla La-Mancha, home to the cities of Madrid and Toledo, with water levels rising such that streets, major transport arteries  – and most particularly, homes were overwhelmed. Such was the force of the water in places that cars were overturned or smashed together and evacuations were ordered. At least two deaths occurred, and several more people were reported missing.

It is this devastation, this sense of loss Louvre conveys through her paintings through their blurred / missing / incomplete elements. This reflection of Dana’s destruction is – as Louvre notes – very personal. She has witnessed the loss and hurt it has caused, and sought to help alleviate it through practical support for those around her hit by the storm’s ferocity. That this has also triggered her creativity through her art additionally completes the circle represented by Agua: that as a force of nature, water has the power to both positively and negatively bring about transformative experiences in life.

SLurl Details

• NovaOwl Sky Gallery (Novatron, rated General)