Category: Art in Second Life

Kelly Yap Art Gallery is hosting two exhibits, both of which opened on Saturday July 26th, 2014. On the ground floor of the gallery is a series of sculptures by Neeks Karu, while upstairs is Betty Tureaud latest installation.

I confess that Neeks Karu is not a name that rings bells with me – which on the strength of this exhibit, really is to my loss. On display are a dozen free-standing and wall mounted sculptures, all but one of which include a degree of moment, and many of which appear to be founded on geometry – several of the wall-mounted pieces in particular are mindful of fractal progressions.

There are no descriptions accompanying the individual pieces – or at least, none I could find in clicking, but the names are evocative: “Exclusion”, “Web”, “Safety”, “Quest” and so on. Each piece is also somewhat hypnotic in its influence; or perhaps mesmerizing might be a better term, drawing the observer into them, encouraging close-in camming in order to watch the changing forms and patterns.

Providing you’re not completely hypnotised by Neeks’ work, make your way upstairs and you’ll find Betty’s latest work, rendered in her hallmark rich colours. This also uses geometry and movement in a piece which is quite deceptive when first perceived, and actually requires a little time (and perhaps a little careful camming) to appreciate fully.

Floating in the multi-hued space are five brightly coloured frames. These wash back and forth along the length of the space, as if to the ebb and flow of the tide – or tides, as each frame can move both faster and slower than the others in a seemingly random pattern, and can suddenly reverse direction or pause. Depending on the rate of motion and speed of change, every so often the frames come together to brief nest one within another within another, largest to smallest. Or, if not all of them, then perhaps three or four of them, while the remaining frames slide away in one direction or the other, as if unwilling to be a part of the orderly gathering.

Careful camming is in order because when viewed from certain positions, such as either end of the room in which they sit, the frames use distance and perspective in an optical illusion familiar to all of us, but which is nevertheless fascinating to witness. Depending on their positions relative to one another, their sizes appear to be reversed: the largest may appear to be medium-sized, a medium-sized frame appears much smaller and the smallest suddenly appears to dominate the rest. Only when they reach their nested equilibrium as they slide along their shared path, is the truth of their relative sizes revealed.

All told, two interesting and complementary exhibits.

I received an invitation to preview Closer Looks, a new exhibition of photography by Melusina Parkin, which officially opens on Monday July 28th at 15:00 SLT at La Sociedad de los Poetas Dementes gallery on Mexico MX.

I last reviewed one of Melusina’s exhibitions in May 2014, when she was exhibiting Themes, which featured 42 of her pieces on display at the The Nite’s Place Red Line Exposition Area. Closer Looks presents around 45 of her photographs, taken of various locations around Second Life and which, as the name of the exhibition suggests, presents them in close-up, focusing down on a specific element within each image, encouraging the observer to similarly focus their attention.

“Watching things from close-up is an amazing practice,” Melusina says in the liner notes accompanying the exhibition. “Isolating an element or detail in a scene, focusing on it, is like when you repeat a word in your mind until it does lose its meaning; it starts then revealing unexpected associations suggesting unusual relationships, showing unforeseen details in it.”

As with Themes, many of these images in this exhibition appear to be drawn from certain thematic elements: cars, structures, ships, skylines, which at first appear to suggest associations between them. However, each picture in fact works on a far more subtle level than that, encouraging the observer to consider the associations which lie not so much between them, but in what is within each of them, and what they start to suggest to the observer’s own mind. It’s an effect Melusina intended to achieve within each of the pictures.

“When photographed, the most trivial object, thanks to framing, light, shadows and colours handling, can acquire a completely different than its own actual or usual one,” Melusina notes. “This is what I tried to do in each of these photos. Enhancing the evocative power of daily life objects and landscapes, showing them out of their context or catching their hidden fascination by camera framing and lighting.”

In this, this exhibition stands as something of a comment on Second Life, where the incredible diversity of creative expression can so easily become trivialized or marginalised by the incredible scope and beauty evident is seeing whole regions and estates, where houses, trees, vehicles, and everything else can so easily blur together that we can miss so much. It is only when we pause, when we take the time to focus down on things, that we can really see just how amazing things in this digital world really are and how incredibly different things really are, even when seemingly alike – and how they can so often challenge our own creative perceptions, encouraging us to think of ways and means of doing things, and so further adding to the creative diversity others can see and learn from.

All told, another thought-provoking and visually stylish exhibition from Melusina, with each of the images on display on sale for anyone who would like to take a piece home with them.

Related Links

• Closer Looks, La Sociedad de los Poetas Dementes (Rated: General)