It is possible that Art Mysterious might be best known for his avatar profile pictures, high-quality, professionally produced and processed images suitable for display in people’s Second Life profiles, together with his landscape photography, also taken in Second Life, which is captivating for a variety of reasons – including subject, angle, use of depth of field, colour processing and more.
However, Art’s work extends far beyond these two aspects, encompassing line drawing, experimentation, real-life portraiture. Using his skills as a graphics artist, Art strives to blur the line between our digital realm in Second Life and the real world, presenting a gateway into a world of art in which graphical art and virtual spaces are combined to offer images of deep emotional content and power.
This is very much in evidence within his work as a portrait artist, whether working directly with photographs taken in-world or when bringing avatars to life through his unique avatar drawings. The latter are striking for the manner in which he strives to move beyond mere hand-drawn reproductions of images captured in-world, but seeks to reveal the inner nuances of the avatar as manipulated by the avatar’s owner; to give a suggestion of the avatar as a part of the life that sits behind the screen.
An avatar is no less “real” than a face from the physical world. It represents identity, presence, emotion, and memory within a digital space that is just as authentic for those who inhabit it. Creating an avatar drawing requires the same level of attention to detail, the same artistic interpretation, and the same responsibility to capture the subject’s essence as a real-life portrait.
– Art Mysterious on creating avatar drawings
Within Soul, an exhibition hosted by Mareea Farrasco at her relocated Imago Art Gallery, Art presents another aspect of his work: that of an experimentalist, bringing together multiple approaches to art which take a raw drawing produced by Art, exposes it to various techniques an tools to provide a completed image, which is then displayed with the original drawing.
Starting from the initial hand-drawn sketch, Art Mysterious used modern technology and artificial intelligence to transform and regenerate the images into final ink drawings, preserving the original concept, composition, and expression. The process became a continuity between the traditional gesture and digital means, where the core idea remained unchanged, but the form was reinterpreted through contemporary tools.
– From the Artists’ description of the major pieces in Soul
The result is a truly stunning series of images, each with its own title, several bordering on the surreal, others offering literary (and cinematic) allusions. All are rich in detail, with the more surreal pieces – AEIOU, Spirit, Core and Clone on the lower floor of the gallery – offering such a richness of imagery and potential interpretation that I’m not even going to try to offer thoughts into them, as doing so would simply spoil the experience first-hand; these are pieces which need to be experienced without any intervening filters of thought.
Similarly the more allusory are gorgeous in their presentation of ideas and their referencing culture, literature and even the human condition – The Lost Raven (quite possibly my favourite in the exhibition, given it Poe-like references), Addiction and Schizophrenia quite powerfully so.
Also to be found in the exhibition is a smaller display of Art’s beautifully engaging line art, offered for sale under the title Transylvania Collection, and which is itself captivating.
Very much an exhibition to be both seen and absorbed – and don’t forget the video “audiobook” accompanying the exhibition.
Slurl Details
- IMAGO Art Gallery (Fantasy Shores, rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 