Category: Art in Second Life

I’m reporting this a little late, given that both exhibitions only have a few more days to run, but currently on display in the featured artists sections of Sisi Biedermann’s Gallery are Melusina Parkin and Zia Sophia (Zia Branner), who will be at the gallery until the end of the month, so there really is only a couple of days left in which to see them!

Melusina Parkin really needs no introduction to readers of this blog; I’m an admitted admirer of her work, which I’ve featured in these pages on numerous occasions. Within her space at Sisi’s, she offers Journeys, another utterly engaging take on Second Life, the places it offers and their innate beauty.

Melu’s eye for angle, depth, composition and detail always presents chances to see Second Life in a new way and / or light. Rather than focusing on the whole to tell a story, she discovers the part that perhaps utters only a single line: the curve and rise of a paved footpath as it winds between cresting undulations of flowers before it vanishes over a low rise; the silhouette of a lighthouse caught between the branches of a thicket as the Sun dips between the coastal hills beyond; a tree dipping branches into the sea as if testing the temperature of the water…

All these, and the rest of the images in Journeys form whisperings that are just enough for the imagination to create an entire world around them. At the same time, there is a rich impression of openness and space present within each piece that truly gives us room to breathe, to feel a sense freedom – something that in the current climate of having to stay at home and away from the rest of the world, can be refreshing and uplifting.

Zia Branner is an artist in the physical world who uses paints with acrylics and use a variety of structure material – paste, gel, sand, glue, bandages and paper – together with oil crayons and acrylic ink, to accentuate elements with her pieces. Canvas is her preferred medium, although she also uses wood and paper, and while she has had formal art teaching, she is also autodidact, learning techniques and approaches whilst experimenting with art.

For her exhibition at Sisi’s, Zia offers an impressive portfolio of her art, from sweeping landscapes that encompass coastal scenes and rolling dunes to charcoal-like sketches of flowers and more abstracted pieces that use colour and line to capture the attention and hold the eye.

There is a vitality about each of these pieces, be it as a result of the sweep, turn, and mix of colour in some or the tactile sense of texturing visible in others, that truly brings them to life, perfectly echoing Zia’s view that “making art is rebellion against the finality of mankind”.

As always, the floors of the gallery above the featured artists spaces are home to Sisi’s own remarkable and utterly captivating work. Having started painting in acrylics in the early 2000s, Sisi has developed her technique to encompass a range of styles and approaches, from painting to mix media and digital collages to Second Life photography, whilst encompassing a wide range of genres – fantasy, wildlife, portrait, landscape and so on. It is not hyperbole when I say her work is genuinely second-to-none for its sheer beauty and richness of expression.

Located just outside of the gallery is a broad glass-like spiral stairway leading up to the Artists United Gallery, were pieces by the likes of Rage Darkstone, TerraMerhyem, Nils Urqhart, Layachi Ihnen, Milly Sharple and more are offered in a richly eclectic and engaging exhibition that adds further depth to a visit to the gallery.

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• Sisi Biedermann Gallery and Garden (Cailsteal Maol, rated Moderate)

After something of a hiatus, Carelyna re-opened her ArtCare Gallery in mid-March to offer an expanded environment for displaying art in Second Life, complete with a featured ensemble exhibition of art that runs through until April 12th, 2020.

The featured exhibition is located on the upper floor of the gallery space, reached by a teleport disk towards the middle of the lower floor. The latter is home to the gallery’s foyer area and landing point, together with a series of exhibition spaces Carelyna has entitled the ArtCare Legacy Collection, celebrating past exhibitions hosted at the gallery.

This lower level presents a marvellously rich variety of art from within and without Second Life. Within the halls can be found 2D and 3D pieces by the likes of Suzie Anderton, Bamboo Barnes, Zia, Branner, CybeleMoon, Lam Erin, Pol Jarvinen, Kimeu Korg, Silas Merlin, Moya Patrick, Agleo Runningbear, and more.

It’s a richly diverse collection featuring landscapes captured from within Second Life, avatar studies, digital mixed-media, pastels and paintings from the physical world, all laid out through the halls in a manner that naturally draws the visit through them, with each artist presented by just enough of their works that the visitor isn’t overwhelmed by the art of display.

On the upper level of the gallery, the featured artists exhibition comprises collections by Devanahousha, Jessamine2108, MTH63, Strimon, Mareea Farasco, Mentat Immelmann, Viktor Savior and Thus Yootz. Here, each artist has an individual hall in which to display their art, allowing them to offer a much broader selection than found for the artists on the lower level.

Like those of the lower lower floor, these displays offer a rich mix of art: digital, Second Life landscapes, image and avatar studies, and physical world paintings and landscapes, the styles of each artist offering a further layer to the distinctiveness of the art to be found within each hall. All deserve equal appreciation, but I confess that I found myself particularly drawn to Thus Yootz’s corner with its impressive selection of 2D pieces that are marvellously processed and finished and displayed with a trio of sculpture trees that are also intensely individual.

As noted, the featured artists’ exhibition will run through until April 12th, and both it and the Legacy Collection make for eye-catching visits.

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• ArtCare Gallery (Prychek, rated: Moderate)

We set a theme and we go our own ways. We take pictures at any sim in the whole of Second Life for about 2 or 3 weeks, and then at the agreed date, we combine our picture at the Café Gallery.

 – Lynx Luga and Kit Boyd describing their personal photo challenges

Photo challenges are not new to Second Life, but Kit and Lynx, owners and curators of the Monocle Man gallery spaces and hang-out, use them to good effect to capture images in a thematic manner whilst allowing them to jointly see Second Life in a way that might otherwise be missed or taken for granted.

For their latest joint challenge, now on display at the ground-level Monocle Man Café they offer The Neon Challenge: images of Second Life featuring or focused on the use of neon across the grid.

Neon is very much a part of Second Life; who hasn’t been to a cyberpunk / Bladerunner / sci-fi themed location, and not encountered neon signs, logos, and lighting? Similarly cityscapes oft have neon signage for stores and locations. As such, its not surprising that some of the images in this selection are from such locations – but they are not, as one might perhaps think, in the majority.

Both Lynx and Kit have cast their nets wide, such that while the sci-fi / Bladerunner, etc., elements are present, they mostly offer unique views and subtle hints (Videophone, Cyberpunk Circles). What’s more they are displayed alongside pieces where neon, whilst present, is not seen as the immediate focus. Instead it sits as a part of the complete picture, forming part of the narrative, rather than being the narrative (Neon Doggy, Trailer Park, Busted, Sexy Legs and Neon Girl).

Even what might be regarded as the seedier side of neon’s use in adult theme locations and advertising (Sexy Girls, Sexy Neon and Dancing Girls) is framed to offer a story behind the light. Take Dancing Girls in particular; within it lies the the suggestion of a hidden life of wanting being the colour-backed dance of the silhouettes, one that for me brought to mind the lyrics from Elton John’s In Neon.

An engaging exhibition that I believe will be open through the next month.

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• Monocle Man Gallery  (Flying Fortress, rated Adult)

Gem Preiz, the master of the fractal image, has opened a new themed exhibition at the Hannington Endowment for the Arts. One of the artists whose work I particularly admire (and who has therefore been reviewed frequently in this blog due to the richness of his art), Gem brings to Elusive Reality another mix of fractal images and thought-provoking context.

The core thrust of this exhibition might be summed up as “the more we as a race know, the less we understand.” Or as Gem notes in the introductory piece at the entrance to Elusive Reality:

Scientific discoveries of the 18th and 19th centuries have enabled us to apprehend more precisely … the secrets of reality.

With the recent discoveries about elementary particles, and the formulation of increasingly complex physical theories, the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries throw us back into doubt, without weakening the insatiable curiosity of researchers. Each discovery raises as many new questions as it solves enigmas, making the material [world] around us an increasingly elusive reality.

At one time, the atom (the existence of which was still a subject of dispute until the early 20th century), was thought to be the single elementary particle – it’s name literally meaning “unable to cut”. It was seen as the building block of matter, the foundation of all that there is. Yet, within a short span of decades, an entire family of elementary particles have been discovered “below” the level of the atom – such as elementary bosons and fundamental fermions (quarks, leptons, antiquarks, and antileptons). These have given rise to an entirely new model of physics – the Standard Model, as well as giving rise to quantum mechanics, whilst at the same time, offering a hint of things yet to be confirmed that lie beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry and offer conjecture about yet-to-be confirmed elementary particles such as the graviton, which might completely revise our understanding of physics.

These theories, ideas, confirmations, questions and conjectures are represented in a series of Gem’s marvellous fractal images. They offer glimpses into a sub-atomic universe, where all of our constructs and monoliths become fragmented into seemingly random formations of shapes and colour. Within these pieces are swarms of objects – some ranging from the hexagonal to the octagonal to the decagonal and possibly beyond, others the spherical. They exist in globs and clouds and extrude themselves as strings or curl around in hints of familiar patterns  – DNA, RNA – without ever actually being so.

From a distance, they may look faintly sci-fi: swarms of asteroids or gaseous clouds floating in space, almost natural in form. Closer up, they become fragmented, breaking into the elemental pieces noted above. Thus, they reflect the changing face of physics – a face which from a distance looks cohesive and whole, but which becomes increasingly fragmented and chaotic as we plumb their depths, as Gem notes, whilst remaining bound together by rules we are just managing to conceive or grasp, even if their nature appears to remain foreign to our complete understanding.

For those familiar with Gem’s work, these pieces, with their almost organic look and textures (be sure to have ALM enabled when viewing this installation) may seem at odds with his more familiar “architectural” images of huge monoliths and giant other-worldly structures. In this the contrast helps serve the idea that we are looking deeper, beyond the organised formality of atoms and into the mystifying world of the sub-atomic. But there is also something of an echo here of Gem’s more natural fractal forms, which itself goes back to some of his earliest installations in SL, such as Cathedral Dreamer, which matched the organic with the more structured. And indeed, the Cathedral Dreamer himself might be located within this installation for those who look, head-in-hands, as if trying to reach his own understanding of the universe of the subatomic.

There is also – if I might suggest – something of a reflection of the current climate of concern present around the globe due to the novel conoravirus outbreak: it’s hard not to see some of the elements in these images as viral strings or clusters, offering a reminder that it is not just in the world of physics where our knowledge and understanding is being challenged…

Elusive Reality is an engaging, captivating installation that intentionally gets the grey matter between the ears working due to both its visual complexity and its underpinning tapestry of meanings and interpretations. Not to be missed.

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• Hannington Endowment for the Arts Hive 1 (Xeltentat Enterprises, rated Moderate)

It’s not often that you come across Friedrich Nietzsche, Hafez, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and Julie Andrews (among others) serving to give voice to items within an art exhibit, but that’s exactly what you’ll find with Peace vs. Chaos, which opened on Saturday March 14th at Artful Expressions gallery, curated by Sorcha Tyles.

The work of Kimmy Ridley, the exhibit feature nine images, four on the subject of chaos, as visualised by Kimmy, four on peace and the ninth a combination. The two groups of four are highly individualised. The four on the subject of peace are perhaps the most easily recognisable: scenes (for the most part) rich in colour, capturing what might be considered peaceful times: summer days, frolics in the countryside, delight in a falling feather – even the forth, an exuberant  throwing wide of arms while astride a bicycle, denotes joy – an emotion that we tend to display when we’re a peace in ourselves.

The chaos images are a little less straightforward, perhaps. In opposition to those depicting peace, three are in black and white, and one in colour. In this they sit as the yin to the three colour and single black-and-white yang of peace. With and blurred rendering of a face, two bodies sans head and the third with the slightly enlarged head floating above (ahead?) of a body out for a stroll.

These are all very esoteric, but it might be said chaos appears to be lacking. Whilst unusual, these images at first don’t appear to invoke a feeling of chaos; that is until we consider the personal nature of the peace images. these all suggest settings that, while they might be familiar to us as peaceful settings, are also very personal. And so it is with the chaos images, each of which offers a personal sense of chaos – of literally feeling that life has one losing one’s head.

The ninth image combines elements of peace and chaos – but perhaps not in the manner that might first be thought. While it would be easy to see the bright colours of the flowers as an expression of peace in keeping with the other peace images, and the skeleton representative of chaos, I’d suggest the reverse is true: the bright cascade of flowers might be seen as representing the natural chaos of nature, and the skeleton the peaceful slumber of death.

Thus together, these images present a personal view of peace and chaos, underlined by the personal selection of quotes offered as a part of the exhibition (just take the information board). These are ideas to which we can all relate times of joy and happiness, confusion and upset; in short, the Peace vs. Chaos that can so often be a part of our lives.

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• Artful Expressions Gallery (Vibus Ten, rated Moderate)