Category: Art in Second Life

Prison is the title of Cica Ghost’s latest full sim installation in Second Life. It opened on Sunday, October 11th, and it is a most curious piece.

On an island bathed in Cica’s familiar muted windlight settings sits what at first glance might seem to be a giant construction site. Great walls of steel bars rise into the air to cross hatch the sky like some enormous scaffolds, or steel reinforcements missing their concrete sheaths. Only the title of the installation reveals them to be what they are: the “walls” of a “prison”. But what kind of prison is open the sky, and has multiple exits to the outside world, all of which open on demand from those within?

“In this prison, all the doors will open for you, and you’ll be able to escape at any time,” Cica says of the installation. “But you won’t feel like going away. And even when you finally leave, you will want to come back.”

And so it is; step through the first door (you may need to touch it up close to get it to open), and you’ll find yourself in something of an open maze with no single defined path through it. Instead, any number of routes through the metal doors may lead you back outside; and once there, you most likely will return inside again and trace another path through the maze, and then possibly another and another.

Is there meaning or metaphor here? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Maybe the piece is a commentary on the many paths and choices we face as we travel through life. Or perhaps a metaphor for life as a learning process: we attempt this or that, find it doesn’t lead us to here we wish to be, so we go back and try a different route.

Or perhaps Cica is simply enticing us with a little game. That there is no deeper meaning other than the desire to sate our curiosity as we seek various routes through the prison’s maze; it’s all in fun. And perhaps that’s why the crows we encounter along the way all cock their heads towards us, as we pass, what seem to be knowing grins on their beaks.

The only way to perhaps find out is to pay a visit for yourself.

SLurl Details

• Prison (Rated: Moderate)

Opening at 11:00 SLT on Sunday, October 2015 at Berg by Nordan Art, curated by Kate Bergdorf, are two new exhibits, and what marks something of a change for the Nordan om Jorden region.

Taking place in Kate’s cosy skyborne gallery space is Passively by Sina Souza, while taking up the ground level of the region, reached via teleport board from the gallery and which has up until now been the setting for a series of eye-catching landscape designs by Kate, is an installation by Giovanna Cerise entitled Memories.

The latter is inspired  by the poem Non recidere, forbice, quel volto (“Do not chop away, shears, that face”) by Eugenio Montale from his 1939 collection Le Occasioni. The design and execution of the installation, to me, both reflects the nuance of the poem and also echoes elements from some of Giovanna’s past works in form and colour, if not in actual content.

Central to the piece is the motif of a face – presumably the face of the woman referred to in the first stanza of the poem, as the narrator pleads with the shears of time not to erase it from his memory. This motif is repeated across the region in various forms, most noticeably on the faces of multiple black and white semi-transparent cubes arranged in a series of three-dimensional chequerboards.

Camming around these cubes causes a degree of “alpha-ing” between the black and white cubes, so they appear to swap positions. as they do so, the images on their faces flicker in and out of view, further suggestive of a memory fading in and out focus, again echoing the poem’s theme.

Sina’s pieces – 3 in all – present images in soft tones and in a large format which draws the observer into them. While the tones in each might be muted, the emotions they evoke aren’t necessarily so, with each piece powerfully reflecting its title: Lost Memories, Visual Ignorance, and The Transience of Existence.

Lost Memories offers something of a link with Giovanna’s work, but all three are extraordinary in both presentation and message, and are deserving of considered study in order to appreciate all the nuances of context.

As noted, both exhibits open at 11:00 SLT on Sunday, October 11th, with music by Eif (aka d-oo-b).

SLURL Details

• Berg by Nordan Art Gallery (Rated Moderate)

Officially opening at 12:00 noon SLT on Tuesday, October 13th  at CBK Art Gallery is a new exhibition  by gallery owner / curator, Ceakay (CK) Ballyhoo, entitled Pop Up Love. On display are six pieces of CK’s art created in the physical world using aquarelle pencils, and presented as a set of pop-up story books.

“The drawings are simple, childlike,” CK says of the pieces,. “with silhouettes portraying a sensation, an idea, rather than a detailed picture.”

In keeping with the child-like theme, the gallery space has been in part decorated in the style of a child’s bedroom or play room. Toys lay scattered about, coloured stars hang from the sky as if suspended from a ceiling, revolving slowly with a glowing crescent Moon, casting shadows across the limited of the gallery like a child’s mobile might cast shadows on the walls of a room.

Each of the books is individually bound, and again in keeping with the title of the exhibit, bears a title related to love: Forever Love, Fragile Love, Hopeful Love, Lost Love, New Love, and All Love. If closed, they can be opened with a click, revealing the picture within which as CK says, is designed to convey the feeling or sensation suggested by the title, rather the provide a detailed image or interpretation. Clicking an open book will close it once more.

As well as Pop Up Love, some of CK’s in-world photography can be seen hanging from the walls of the gallery garden, while in one corner of the gallery sits a little multi-coloured children’s play house, and within it, a series of paintings of a landscape as might have been drawn by a young child. These paintings and the photographs around the gallery edges are all for sale, and if you follow the teleport “door” in the corner of the house, you’ll be carried up to the landscape itself, which CK has created in a skybox.

This is a charming exhibition of work by CK, imaginatively presented and which brings a smile to one’s face. As noted,Pop Up Love officially opens on Tuesday, October 13th at 12:00 noon SLT with music by The Vinnie Show. However, the gallery is open now for those who would like to visit ahead of the opening.

Should you decide to do so, don’t forget to take a walk through the gates into CK’s Mistwood Isle woods and garden, now rich in autumnal colours and incorporating a Halloween theme in the Devil’s Den corner.

SLurl Details

• CBK Art Gallery SLurl (Rated: Adult)

“Photography is my passion in here and it s what keeps me coming back,” states Hillany Scofield, “Hills” to her friends. “I love to experiment and to discover new things and  I love to get inspired.”

If anyone needed any proof of her talent as one of Second life’s foremost avatar portraiture photographers, they need only visit her Flickr stream to see her creativity at work.  However, throughout October, they can get up close and personal with some of her more recent work by visiting her own Hills Gallery in-world, which is currently featuring a display of her images simply entitled A Photography Selection.

The images are all a part of a series Hills took for Photography magazine, published by Joaopedro Oh, and which for October features Hills’ work alongside Awesome Fallen, Darklyn Dover, Migan Forder, to name but three.

Within A Photography Selection there is a mix of erotic and non-erotic pieces, with the former very much focused on the sensual rather than the sexual. However, nudity is in some of the images, so they might be considered NSFW. However, there is far more here than “just” nude studies.

Noted for her use of both monochrome and a studied balance of colour, Hills’ images are always extraordinary in their composition and presentation, and this is true of the pieces on display in this selection, which offers a clear demonstration of her eye for composition and balance through pose, structure and tone.

All told, a superb series of studies, all beautifully presented in a gallery which is itself an eye-catching design, and perfectly suited to the occasion of displaying Hill’s work.

SLurl Details

• Hills Gallery, Cafemar (Rated: Adult)

The latest exhibition of art to feature at the superb Dathúil Gallery, owned by Max Butoh and curated by Lυcy (LucyDiam0nd), opened on Friday, October 2nd. It is something of a slight departure from the monthly exhibitions held up until now. Rather the focus on the work of a particular artist or artistic coupling, the exhibition features the “top twenty” selection from this year’s  Chamber Society Photography Competition, and which have been selected from a total of over 90 entries overall.For those unfamiliar with it, [the Chamber] is a private members club also owned and operated by Max, and is one of several establishments also located on the same region – Floris – as the Dathúil gallery.

The focus of the club is “to create a deep and erotic atmosphere for role-play and erotic chat for members. We focus on politeness and manners with a twist. Our members expect intelligent, lively conversation and imagination along with beautiful and detailed surroundings.” Membership requires adherence to a dress code, an understood code of conduct, and observation of the society’s rules.

As one might imagine, given the erotic overtures within [the Chamber], the images on display within the gallery  are of a similarly erotic nature, with many among them perhaps NSFW.

Now in its third year, the competition awards prizes for the top three entries, which have been awarded to Ziekling Bunnyhug (1st place), Yum Parkin (2nd) and Ossia Xevion and Janet Patton (joint 3rd). The four winning entries are displayed at the front of the gallery space, with the remaining top twenty selections ranged around both the main floor and mezzanine, each piece individually displayed on an easel with the photographer’s name displayed above it.

While nudity is evident in some of the images (hence the NSFW warning above), it is not a common theme to all, and the overall approach of the photographers tends towards subtle eroticism, rather than blatant titillation. In this, as with [the Chamber] itself, the exhibition further gives the lie to the misconception held by some pundits that Adult themed locations in Second life are by default indicative of “pornographic” content.

All told, another excellent exhibition from Lucy and Max which offers another window onto the range of creative and artistic talent which exists within Second Life.

SLurl Details

• Dathúil Gallery (Rated: Adult)