Having opened on April 24th, 2024, the May exhibition at Aneli Abeyante’s La Maison d’Aneli brings together three unique talents in the world of Second Life art, in three highly individual and engaging exhibitions. As usual, all three can be reached from the ground level of the gallery, either via the main teleport disk, or by walking onto the “whirlpool” teleport on the floor directly in from of the three large posters advertising the exhibitions.
Blip Mumfuzz needs no introduction to regular readers of these pages; I’ve been an admirer for her art for a long time, and have often reviewed her exhibitions. Blip has a way with the images she creates of the Second Life places she visits which sets her work apart from merely being landscape photographs. She is unafraid to flood her work with colour, sometimes to the point of it being almost abstract, whilst elsewhere she captures marvellous scene which evoke the rich diversity of nature and the wildness of its growth whilst also, through a subtle direction of the eye to linear elements within them, can impose a sense of order and / or subdivision.
These linear elements can come in many forms – the framing of, or focus on tree trunks in a grove; the subtle splitting of a scene by a hedgerow or shrubs; the more direct references to order through the inclusion of fences, gates and doorways; the natural stepping grace of rock formations or the overlay of hillslopes, small to large – or even the simple foreground focus on stalks of grass growing against a background of foliage or rock. This technique is much in evidence through the pieces making up Blip’s multi-level exhibition at La Maison d’Aneli, particularly in the upper section of the exhibit, which she has – appropriately enough – entitled Fences, a selection of pieces intended to offer reflections on a number of physical and metaphorical reflections o nature, art, photography and – life, as Blip herself notes:
Fences are rich symbols, signifying barriers, or boundaries, both physical and metaphorical, protection, security, division, exclusion, confinement. In art they can signify isolation, societal restrictions, and the tension between freedom and constraint. They can serve as a metaphor for personal boundaries or emotional barriers. The fences in my images are broken or partial suggesting barriers broken, or limits eroded over time.
– Blip Mumfuzz
Within their joint exhibition, artist, videographer and social commentator (and a conscience of the world through his work) Tutsy Navarathna and lighting and media artist Adwehe present what might be best referred to as an artistic commentary on modern life and the horribly pervasive banality, mundanity and shallowness of modern advertising. It’s a theme (and threat) most easily expressed through the artists’ own words:
Whether you’re a Pop-Artist, Cubist, Surrealist, Futurist, Expressionist, Psychedelist, Post-Impressionist or even a Promptist!… Come and enjoy the captivating experience of being plunged into a whirlwind of megabit-deficient pixels! Let yourself be drawn into the strangest, most fantastic, most dreamlike, most sensual vision of an extravagant metaverse parasitized by invasive advertising slogans!
– Tutsy and Adwehe
On arrival, it is important to accept the local Experience in order to see the exhibition under the correct environment and lighting. There is a sign about this at the main teleport disk landing point, but I found I had to descend the steps to the lower level in order to trigger the Experience dialogue.
I admit I found this installation a little hard to get into – whilst appreciating the pop-art nature in the use of colours within it – and felt that perhaps some of the images could perhaps have been a little larger for more comfortable viewing. However, the humour across several is clear (and I have to admit to chuckling at one image which pokes fun at the oft-referenced commentary on the inverse relationship between male genitalia size and the need for big / fast cars). However, I’ll leave it you you to appreciate the installation for yourselves!
SLurl Details
- La Maison d’Aneli main landing (Virtual Holland, rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 