The mandala (literally meaning “circle” in Sanskrit) is a symbol with very deep religious, spiritual and even political meaning. The classical form for a mandala is a square with four (generally T-shaped) gates containing a circle with a centre point, and generally displaying radial balance. More generically, “mandala” can mean a geometric pattern intended to symbolise the cosmos, and which contains a squaring of the circle, representing balance and order.
Mandalas are also intrinsically beautiful works of art, as demonstrated by Australian artist Sheba Blitz, whose work is the subject of the latest exhibition at Kayly Iali’s Gallery 24 at Tabula Rasa. Sheba describes herself as a Mandala Artist, producing her intricate pieces using gouache, acrylics and metallic paints on either canvas or paper, drawing on sources such as music, books, astrology and tarot symbolism as her inspiration.
Mandalas – particularly those created through sandpainting, or dul-tson-kyil-khor, in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism – have always fascinated me, the inherent balance present within them, the confluence of ideas they represent – the sheer beauty and intensity of their very creation – is utterly absorbing and calming. Sheba’s works exhibits all of this, each one individually rich in symmetry and harmony. Fortunately, as they are produced through more substantial mediums than coloured powders, they remain with us for far longer; there is no metaphor for “impermanence” here. Instead, one might say they are reflective of the enduring measure of the cosmos.
Sheba informs Kayly that she didn’t come to Second Life to display her work; she decided to do so as a result of naturally seeking out other artists and attending exhibitions, buying art by others and immersing herself in the means to experience art in a new way. Fortunately, she was also invited to exhibit her art in-world, and because of that original invitation, we can now all enjoy her work.
It doesn’t matter whether you follow the spiritual, religious or even Jungian view of mandalas, Sheba’s work is instantly approachable and can be appreciated in and of itself. However, should you feel the desire, the back room of the gallery offers a spot for quiet contemplation.
Saturday, July 12th witnessed the opening of The Vordun Museum and Gallery, created and curated by Jake Vordun, the owner of Fancy Decor.
Occupying a large, modern building on one side of the Fancy Decor region, the museum and gallery presents a venue capable of supporting multiple exhibitions, with two art exhibits and a museum exhibition being presented for the opening season. Together they make for a unique and immersive visit.
The Vordun: European Masters: 300 Years of Painting
The first of the art exhibitions is European Masters, 300 Years of Painting, which occupies the main gallery hall. On displays are over 30 paintings from the period 1500 through 1799, all of which are presented in a scale consistent with one another and to their physical world originals. These can be freely perused and admired, title cards alongside of each one offering information on its provenance: artist, title, year of painting, medium and the physical world collection where it current resides.
However, what makes this exhibit unique is that it has an associated experience. On entering the gallery lobby, visitors should be asked to accept the gallery’s experience, smartly scripted by Tangle Giano of Madpea fame (if the dialogue is not displayed, click one of the racks of headsets on the lobby counters). Accepting it will attach a HUD and explanatory note card to your screen. The card can be clicked away once read (and the permissions requested by the experience are automatically revoked and the HUD removed & deleted on leaving the gallery area / teleporting away from the region).
The HUD comprises a numbered keypad and display screen, each of the numbers corresponding to a number displayed in the lower right corner of the title card for 28 of the displayed paintings. When standing in front of one such painting, clicking the corresponding number on the HUD will focus your camera directly on the picture and display additional information (courtesy of Google Culture and Art) in local chat. An audio reading of the same text is also given for those with local sounds enabled, while the provenance information for the painting is displayed in the screen area of the HUD. Once the audio track has finished, control of the camera is released, allowing individual paintings to be more freely admired.
This approach adds considerable immersive depth to the exhibition, offering something of an audio tour of the paintings on display, whilst allowing visitors to freely wander between them in an order of their own choosing.
The paintings themselves are superbly reproduced, and run from portraits of famous figures of the times, through still life scenes, landscapes, allegorical paintings and biblical scenes. All studiously avoid the use of Full Bright, and this coupled with the use of a neutral windlight settings for the region, allows them to be presented in as close to “real world” lighting conditions as possible, further enhancing the immersive feel of the exhibition.
The north wing of the gallery houses the second art exhibition, entitled Lip Service. Running through until September 19th, it features a set of watercolour drawings of female mouth – or specifically lips – by physical world and Second Life artist Celeste Forwzy.
Twelve framed images are presented in the exhibit, and again considerable care has been taken in their presentation. The gallery space is rendering in a neutral white, with a simple wooden floor, with each drawing softly lit through the use of a projected light. The result is and environment ideally suited to focusing one’s attention on the drawings, each of which is extraordinarily attractive.
Across the hall, in the south wing, is A Night To Remember (from the 1958 film of the same name), curated by Emery Milneaux. An interactive exhibition commemorating the loss of RMS Titanic on the night of April 14th 1912, it runs through until October 9th, and is another extraordinary piece.
On entering the exhibition space, visitors are asked to attach a boarding pass to their screen. This bears the name of an actual passenger aboard the Titanic, with the promise that the fate of the passenger will be revealed further into the exhibition. From here, visitors move through a series of rooms which take us through Titanic’s brief history, from construction to loss.
This is told through a richly mixed medium of interactive photos and title cards (click the former to focus your camera on the photo, click the latter to receive further information in chat), together with principal figures from the liner’s story: Commodore Edward Smith, the Titanic’s Captain, socialite Madeleine Astor, first class passenger and survivor, Frederick Fleet, one of the vessel’s lookouts on the fateful night, and a young newspaper boy in London, Ned Parfett. Bump into any of them, and they will present a short “first hand” narrative. There are also reproductions of the ship’s Grand Staircase, together with a first and third class cabin – the latter two starkly outlining the massive class divide of Edwardian society.
However, it is the final gallery of this exhibit which is the most poignant, dealing with the liner’s sinking. In particular, in the final room, three large plaques list the names of every passenger who sailed with the Titanic, together with their fate on the night of April 14th. Through these, visitors can discover the fate of the person named on their boarding pass, adding something of a personal dimension to the exhibition. A fourth plaque commemorates the liner’s crew, 700 of whom (out of 916) lost their lives.
Individually, any one of the exhibitions at The Vordun would be more than worth visiting. Taken together, and a visit becomes a singular experience of many facets, one I have no hesitation in recommending. And I’ve not even covered the gift shop, which offers copies of the drawings, paintings and memorabilia for sale, together with a range of other souvenir items.
My congratulation to Jake and all involved in the project for developing such an outstanding venue. I look forward to making many future visits to The Vordun, and seeing future exhibitions, and the use of capabilities like Experience Keys might be further leveraged.
Noted for her ability to play with our perception of depth by having elements of her images reaching beyond the confines of their picture frame, even to the point of using props completely outside of the picture, Molly’s art is instantly recognisable when encountered in Second Life – and it is always a delight to visit exhibitions of her more recent work, as is the case here.
On display are 22 pictures (23 if you count the superb self-portrait on the upper floor, which makes clever use of one of the gallery’s arched windows), which are split between the two floors of the gallery. Collectively, the exhibition is presented in memory of Molly’s late father, who passed away in May 2016 at the age of 95, with four of the images in particular being dedicated to him.
Not that this is in any way a downbeat exhibition; quite the reverse. As Molly notes, she inherited her sense of humour from her father, and it is much in evidence in many of the pieces displayed here and in a variety of ways, from the subtle, smile-inducing, through to the right-in-you-face-laugh-out-loud. Between these extremes sit the whimsical, the thought-provoking and – of course – the dedications.
As I noted at the top of this piece, it is always a delight to see Molly’s art in Second Life, and Creative Inhalations: Breaking Bad in Frenzyville is no exception. Do be sure to drop in before the end of August, especially if you’ve not encountered her work before.
“I had been thinking for some time about having a place,” Giovanna Cerise said as we stood at the landing point of her new exhibition space, The Lost Harbour, which officially opens on Thursday, July 14th. “Some time ago I had a gallery, and many people have asked me if I would have a regular place where they could see my work and so I decided to make one.”
If I’m totally honest, Giovanna having a space in she can freely display her art once more is well overdue. Whether it takes one of her large-scale immersive pieces such as Tristan und Isolde or The Eternal Suspense (to name but two), or her smaller pieces, as seen in her recent Retrospective , her work is beautifully exquisite and quite marvellous to see. I was therefore excited to learn about The Lost Harbour, and delighted to spend time visiting with her ahead of the opening.
Occupying the north-east corner of a region, The Last Harbour is a fabulous setting for Giovanna’s work, beautifully laid out and presented to visitors. From the landing point, a series of platforms sit on the waters of the parcel, connected by transparent and translucent tiles from the aforementioned Tristan und Isolde. These form both a display space and a walkway passing across the parcel.
On the seaward side of the parcel sit four pieces which those familiar with Giovanna’s work may recognise as being from some of her past installations. On the landward side, against the boundary wall, are more pieces, notably her black pen line images and forms mindful of installations like Line, together 3D pieces, such as Breeze, a piece best appreciated by camming around and through it, rather than simply regarding it whilst stood still.
Between these two sides is a stepped platform on which are displayed four new studies, comprising single and paired figures. “I wanted to do some new work,” Giovanna told me as we studied them. “In recent times I have worked mostly for large installations. I wanted to focus my ideas and my inspiration on smaller works.”
She continued, “Each of them expresses an idea; a thought emotion. Pandora, Eve, Self Control, Stranger, The Unbearable Lightness of Being … symbolic names.” Symbolic they may be, but they are also deeply intimate; one doesn’t so much observe each of these figures; one becomes a part of each of their stories, a confidante in their expression, if you will.
This is a place where wandering, sitting and contemplation are welcomed. “I imagined a place to walk among the works of art and even then relax by the sea,” Giovanna said, indicating the arched wall along one side of the exhibition space. Passing through this will indeed bring you to a little beach, beautifully landscapes and with seats in which visitors can relax, as well as little beach house, while hovering over the sandy tide are the sirens from Il Folle Volo (The Mad Flight).
The Last Harbour formally opens at 13:00 SLT on Thursday, July 14th at 13.00 SLT. My congratulations to Giovanna in establishing the space, and my thanks to her as well, for allowing me to pop over and spend time with her discussing it.
“This was special to me to feel the bravery of woman soldiers,” Storie’S Helendale (GlitterPrincess Destiny) states in the introductory notes to I Was Born in Kurdistan, her latest immersive piece. “(They don’t cook in the kitchen). (Instead they fight Isis).”
This is a difficult piece to quantify, presenting a war-torn environment as a backdrop for images depicting women caught within various combat situations, clearly drawn from the unfolding situation in Iraq. It is undoubtedly an atmospheric build – a chart at the landing point provides advice on the best viewer graphics / windlight settings for viewing it as intended.
Central to it stands the concrete skeleton of a war-torn building. Fires burn in old oil drums, the ground is rough and pitted and burned-out cars and other detritus resulting from the passage of combat are scattered around. Around the walls of this environment, and mounted in the skeletal remains of the building are images by Storie’S depicting woman in combat. Some are in traditional-look middle-eastern dress, others is more “homespun uniforms”, others in combat fatigues.
The mix of images presents both colour and monochrome pieces, with the content ranging from actually scenes of combat, through scenes from the aftermath of fighting to very personal scenes of comrades supporting one another or combat veterans simply trying to get some respite and rest.
Since is the approach taken to the piece, that interpreting it is a very subjective affair. There is no doubting that many of them do echo the privations and sadness of war; there is a subtle condemnation of the suffering it brings present in many of the images. But this seems to be somewhat offset by an uncomfortable sense that women in combat is being celebrated to a degree.
While there are – sadly – time in this world when the only recourse is for people to take up arms and stand against the forces which would otherwise overwhelm them and their way of life. To be clear, I Was Born in Kurdistan is more a reflection of this than anything else; but the “celebratory” aspect of some of the images might give rise to a negative reaction among some visitors.
However, it is these juxtapositions of viewpoints and emotions which makes I Was Born in Kurdistan an installation which needs to be seen directly, rather than simply related through a blog post like this. There is currently no closing date stated for the exhibition, which opened on July 9th; I would anticipate it remaining open for at least a month.
Opening on Sunday, July 10th at 12:00 noon SLT, is Beautiful Bizarre, the latest ensemble challenge presented by Angelika Corral and SheldonBR at their DaphneArts Gallery. The exhibition features individual works by Gwenarielle, Maghda, Terrygold, Angelika Corral, SheldonBR, Leeleu Lemondrop, Paradox Messmer, Rainbow Mubble, Sabbian Paine, Loki Silverson and Asa Vordun, with Theda Tammas providing both a 2D and 3D piece for the exhibition.
“Art is an expression of our emotions, the way we see and experience the world, and beauty has been depicted as an artistic value.” Angelika and Sheldon note in their introduction to the exhibition. “In the Renaissance, artists developed theories of ideal proportion and harmony, having and the painting of Venus, portrayed by Botticelli, and the sculpture of David, by Michelangelo, as the idealisation of beauty. “Modern art came to bring another perception of a world devastated by two great wars, and it reflects in the asymmetry of bodies and distorted faces. But there is always a place for beauty, even in the bizarre things. Schiele, Picasso, Matisse, the Surrealists, all are great example of this.”
And so it is that the artists here have been invited to present their interpretations of the “beautiful bizarre”; and the result is a highly eclectic mixture of pieces; far more eclectic, I would suggest, than exhibitions such as Surrealism and Imagine. Which should be taken to indicate anything negative in my view of the Beautiful Bizarre. Art is, after all, an expression of our emotions, as Angelika and Sheldon note, and thus encouraging a subjective, an emotional response to these works is perhaps as much a part of the exhibition as the artists’ own interpretations of the “beautiful bizarre”.
So it might be said that this exhibition operates on two levels. On the first, we are asked to explore how the artists have presented their interpretations of the subject; while and on the second, we are asked to consider our response to each of the pieces offered in the exhibit.
For my part, I was struck by how broad in scope the pieces are in presenting the theme, whilst at the same time several also appear linked to other another through their underpinning inspiration. This is perhaps most noticeable in the pieces presented by Gwenarielle, Rainbow,, Sabbian and Terrygold; so much so, that I doubt it is by chance that the pieces by three of these artists are all presented in a single room within the gallery.
Elsewhere, reflections of a common point of inspiration might also be glimpsed in both Asa’s piece and the 2D work presented by Theda. I’ll also confess that the latter piece (seen in the 2nd image from the top of this review), together with Theda’s 3D piece and Paradox Messmer’s Eyes Unseen (seen in the image directly above), drew the strongest emotional responses from me.
Beautiful Bizarre is another extraordinary exhibition featuring some of SL’s most extraordinary talents; one I have no hesitation I recommending. As noted at the top of this piece, it officially opens at 12:00 noon SLT on Sunday, July 10th, 2016, and will remain open through July and early August.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 