Category: Art in Second Life

Update, October 1st: Ani’s Gallery has relocated. SLurls in this article have been updated to reflect the gallery’s new location.

Ani (Anibrm Jung) is an award-winning photographer in the physical world who has been active in Second Life since 2006. Based in the Netherlands, Ani has specialised in photographing nature, many of her images captured from her own garden, and all of them recorded using only natural light, with everything framed directly through the viewfinder, and with no subsequent cropping or image manipulation.

I’ve written about her photography on numerous occasions in this blog (see in particular, The art of nature in Second Life (2016) and A return to the Art of Nature in Second Life (2017)), as I’ve always found her photography absorbing and engaging.

More recently, Ani had turned her attention to photography within Second life, where she has brought her eye for detail and composition fully to bear to create some of the most engaging studies of Second Life art, landscapes and avatars.

A selection of Ani’s art can be seen, appreciated and purchased through her new gallery, Ani’s Gallery and Home to Sibelius, and she recently invited me to pay a visit to view the gallery, which also includes an exhibition by another of my favourite artists, Cybele Moon.

The gallery – located in a skybox – offers several spaces for exhibitions, with Ani’s work occupying the lower floor, and the guest exhibition space on the upper level.  The landing point sits within the lower level, in a hall that serves both as an exhibition space and as a reception foyer. This area has a focus on Ani’s physical world photography, which is as bewitching as ever, and includes several pieces captured from within Second Life, thus presenting an eye-catching mix.

The neighbouring hall focuses almost entirely on Ani’s Second Life photography which – as noted, includes the same richness of focus and attention to composition, angle, tone and detail that marks these pieces completely captivating – and don’t miss her cat photos, either! Upstairs, Cybele presents Travels Songs and Stories, another completing enthralling exhibition of her exceptional digital art which also can so marvellously combine the realms of the physical and the virtual – and which should never be missed.

Two remarkable artists together in a single gallery marks Ani’s Gallery a worthy destination for any lover of the arts and artistic expression in Second life.

SLurl Details

• Ani’s Gallery (West Grove, rated Moderate)

Xia’s Diary, currently open (for a little while longer, at least!) at Diotima Art Gallery curated by Red Bikcin, is an exhibition in images and words that offers reflections on life – both real and virtual – by Xia Chieng.

This is a thought-provoking installation in which Xia offers something of in introspection on her own life – how it has played out in Second Life, and how matters from her physical world life have informed her time in in the virtual and how the latter has caused her to more generally reflect on life as a whole.

My life has been intense, but I’ve never known where to fit. Opportunist and ambitious, my life has taken me to many places and to experience all kinds of situations, some good and some bad. Blinded by moving forward, never look around me or those left behind … When I looked at life through the camera, I felt that I could finally see it. Then he started a new path.

– Xia Chieng, defining Xia’s Diary

Twenty-one images – all of them avatar studies (although one has an aspect to it suggesting it might have originated in the physical world) – are presented in the exhibition. Most sit as individual pieces, although there are three that clearly form a single group, and three more are presented in such a way as to suggest they could form a set.

All are accompanied by Xia’s thoughts, the words provided with evocative titles such as Lost Hope, Ode to Emily, Broken Doll, and so on. They offer frames to the images over which they sit – and a windows into Xia’s thoughts and feelings.

These images are a document of my journey through life, RL and SL, I make no difference. Everything I do is part of my life. Many things are recreated in our mind with our imagination. Maybe it is a way of looking for a meaning and transcending many problems that torment us. A second life can be a second chance. 

– Xia Chieng, defining Xia’s Diary

The words, offered white-on-black are as clear-cut and unequivocal as their presentation. Evocative, provocative (as are some of the images), brutally honest, they offer the kind of introspection most of us probably prefer to carry out within our own heads (and most likely in a darkened room) well away from public display.

Thus, Xia’s Diary becomes something of a tour de force of feelings and responses in which we are cast into multiple roles. We are the voyeur and the emotional vampire, illicitly peeping in on the sometimes salacious, often poignantly deep, confessions from the heart and drawing from them. And given these are confessions – honest, down-to-Earth examinations of self, of hopes, of fears, of confusion of need – so too are we cast as the confessional-made-flesh, bearing witness to the opening of a soul. And because these are deeply personal reflections, so too are we given pause to hold up a mirror to ourselves and review who and what we are in life, both physical and virtual.

Intense, sometimes dark, expressive, and captivating, one of the more richly narrative and personal exhibitions I’ve recently seen.

SLurl Details

• Diotima Art Gallery (Gigli Waves, rated: Moderate)

Currently open at The Edge Art Gallery operated and curated by Ladmilla, is an exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci. The exhibition, entitled The Man Who Lived in the Future, features a new look for The Edge Art Gallery and displays are by sadi8 and JurisJo, jessamine2108, Larisalyn, PatrickofIreland, Kapaan and Ladmilla herself.

The new look for the gallery space is very much Tuscan in nature – as befitting da Vinci, a son of Florence (Vinci being a città of Florence). Exhibition spaces take the form of individual Tuscan-style houses all space around three sides of open lawns and a garden area, with the main reception area and a further gallery space rounding-out the building on the three sides of the lawns.

Within this garden is a model of da Vinci’s aerial screw by Sergio Delacruz, together with an airship and Bach’s Spine (the latter by Eupalinos Ugajin) to give reminders of both de Vinci’s own vision and the ideas of motion and flight, which both fascinated him. However, this is very much an exhibition of 2D art, and the manner in which the artist have chosen to interpret the life and times of da Vinci is what makes it attractive.

For example, Larisalyn takes as her muse, Cecilia Gallerani. A mistress of Ludovico Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, she was da Vinci’s subject for his 1489 painting The Lady with an Ermine. She was also responsible for inviting da Vinci to her chamber discussions on philosophy and other subjects with members of the local intellectual set over which she presided. With the images presented here, Larisalyn notes she has tried to represent da Vinci’s style of painting.

Kapaan, meanwhile focuses on both da Vinci’s inventiveness and his art. His gallery space includes representations of da Vinci’s parachute,  together with monochrome images of the parachute in use. These are displayed with imaginative takes on a couple of da Vinci’s most famous works, The Vitruvian Man and Mona Lisa.

Styles reminiscent of da Vinci’s studies of people and nature, as well as representations of his flying machine can also be found within the displays by PatrickofIreland, sadi8 and JurisJo, and Ladmilla – and I admit to finding PatrickofIreland’s The Study, featuring da Vinci himself, to be particularly evocative, as is the small model of da Vinci’s flying machine.

I confess to being a little confused by jessamine2108’s images, which appear to be closer to more “traditional” avatar and SL nature studies, rather than being intrinsic to a celebration of da Vinci. Which is not to say they are not in themselves attractive.

Those who venture into the gallery space enclosing two sides of the landing point terrace will find a further selection of Ladmilla’s own art, including a series of images partnered with words by Eli Medier, which make for an evocative display in their own right.

Two musical events are planned alongside The Man Who Lived in the Future. On Saturday, July 27th, DJ Avalon Boa will be spinning music from 12:00 noon SLT through 14:00, with DJ le Ouf doing the same at the same time, on Saturday, August 3rd.

SLurl Details

• THE EDGE Art Gallery (Totuga Island, rated: Moderate)

I recently gained an introduction to the photography of artist, photographer, and Second Life resident, Davenwolf Dagger as a result of his participation in the July exhibition at Kultivate’s The Edge gallery (see: Kultivate: The Edge Gallery – July 2019), where his presented an eye-catching collection of black-and-white photos entitled The Blacksmith Series, that particularly caught my eye, both for the richness of their narrative and for the fact they indirectly reminded me to recall the time I was lucky enough to spend in Tasmania.

Coincident to my review of that exhibition, Davenwolf also sent me an invitation to visit his in-world gallery, Pixtoria Galleries – an invitation I was happy to accept.

Split between two levels, one on the ground and the other in a skybox, Pixtoria is a veritable tour de force of Davenwolf’s art  – and quite engagingly so. The ground floor provides an introduction to his digital images, running from the abstract through to fractal-like pieces to those suggestive of exotic, alien landscapes to a – for me – fascinating piece entitled DNA, with is marvellous suggestion of constructs and building-blocks and hint of architectural constructs.

The ground level gallery space is small, offering a social area on its upper floor rather than more images, but it is enough the whet the appetite and encourage the visitor to click the teleport disk to reach the sky gallery.

I’m a bit of a creator and perfectionist so I’m always making something. Whether it be in SL or the real world I like to keep myself entertained by creating artworks, photography, drums, videos, sculptures etc., you name it and I’ve done it over the years. Some projects I’ve had with better success than others but I eventually get there in the end.

– Davenwolf, describing his life and art

The sky gallery is a much larger affair, split into two levels of two halls apiece, the upper levels connected to the lower by elevators. The lower level is home to more of Davenwolf’s digital art, one hall devoted to pieces that continue the themes evident in some of the ground level pcitures, with experiments in line, colour, form and tone. Some of these offer a clear fractal influence (Trident, the triptych like Connections and Spiral), while others present more “organic” forms.

Across the floor, in the other lower level hall are some utterly wonderful images expressing the beauty of geometry as a model for art. Spheres, rings, cones and more sit on chequerboard patterns and under expressive skies, their colours and reflective surfaces offers wonderful depth, so much so you feel like the reflections should move in response to your own camera / avatar movements. Tucked into one corner of this hall are two pieces – Urban Decay and Stranded – that each contain an especially powerful narrative.

The upper levels of the gallery featured, at the time of my visit, two exhibitions of Davenwolf’s photography. The first focuses on The Blacksmith Series, his marvellous black-and-white series noted above, captured in an old working environment in Launceston, Tasmania, and, across the intervening atrium, Ward 21 Morisset Asylum.

The latter is an utterly evocative series, taken (I assume) in a disused wing of the psychiatric hospital that opened in 1908 either within, or very close to, the town of Morisset, New South Wales, Australia. Reaching its peak in the 1960, when it houses up to 1600 patients, today it still tends to dominate the town’s reputation, despite now having a patient population roughly one-tenth the number from the 1960s.

Davenwolf’s pictures capture halls and rooms now broken and decaying, but which are now the home of graffiti. Utilising light and shadow, camera angle and choice of lens, and the occasional image of a man, Davenwolf uses the condition of the ward and the presence of the graffiti to give  – and pardon the term, no pun intended whatsoever – graphic interpretation of a mind in turmoil.

When viewed as complete sets, The Blacksmith Series and the Ward 21 Series are striking in their storytelling. However, the individual pieces within each also stand as collectable images in their own right.  Similarly, the digital images offered through the gallery will natural grace any art collection, making any visit to Pixtoria Galleries doubly worthwhile.

SLurl Details

• Pixtoria Galleries (SouthPointe, rated Moderate)