Category: Art in Second Life

Art Deco – or simply Deco – is a style of visual arts, architecture and design that we most recognise as reflecting the period of the 1920-1930s. Drawing on the bold geometric forms of Cubism and the Vienna Secession, and the bright colours of Fauvism whilst also incorporating or stylising architecture, design and art from the Far and Near East and South America, Deco influenced the design of buildings, furniture, jewellery, fashion, cars, cinemas, trains, ocean liners and everyday household objects from radios to ashtrays, table lamps, clocks – and even vacuum cleaners. Even today it is still associated with luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress.

However, whilst most readily identified with the decades immediately prior to World War 2, Deco actually arose in the years leading up to the First World War. It took its name from the term arts décoratifs, originally coined in the mid-1870s so that the designers of furniture, textiles, and other decoration in France a form of official status. By 1901, the Société des Artistes Décorateurs (Society of Decorative Artists) had formed, and decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors.

In 1912 the Société proposed a major international exhibition of art and design should be hosted in Paris. However, such was the scale of the event that the outbreak of the Great War interrupted proceedings, so it was not until 1925 that the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) was held. Running for seven months, the exposition 15,000 exhibitors from twenty different countries, and it was visited by sixteen million people – and the term Art Deco came into popular, recognised use around the world.

Art Deco has also exerted a strong influence within Second Life, where – in keeping with its physical world namesake – it has been applied to buildings, vehicles, furnishings, lighting, decorative items and so on. One exponent of Art Deco is Melusina Parkin, who offers a range of Deco items through her store, the upper floor of which forms her personal gallery space. As a photographer, Melu is highly regarded within SL – and with good reason; her images are among some of the most narratively rich one can hope to witness, as I’ve commented upon on numerous occasions in this blog.

With her latest exhibition Art Deco Fragments, which opened on April 15th, Melu combines her unique perspective for photography with her love of Art Deco to offer a series of marvellous images that allow the stylistic richness of Deco to speak fully and freely. Using her trademark tight focus and angle, she presents elements of Deco (and also, one might say, touches of Streamline Moderne, the art form that grew out of Deco in the 1930s) in a manner that concentrates the eye on specific elements of buildings (use of geometry, glass, metal, lighting, and so on), that give Deco architecture that richness of look and exuberance of design we cannot fail to find attractive as we come across them in both the physical world in Second Life.

Accompanying the exhibition is the first volume of a four-book series Melusina is producing on the subject of Art Deco. As with Fragments, this first volume Art Deco: Building Details focuses on the details found within Deco architecture. Future volumes will look at building exteriors, interiors and the finer details found within Deco interior styling.

Dedicated to the memory of Sonatta Morales, another Second Life resident and Deco / Retro designer, Art Deco Fragments is both another engaging and a personal exhibition from Melusina.

SLurl Details

• Melusina Parkin – Art Deco Fragments (Time Portal, rated General)

Bamboo Barnes has a new exhibition, one that opened at Hermes Kondor’s main gallery at the Kondor Art Centre on April 14th, and like all of her work, it is a rich collection of images that offer food for thought through a presentation of vibrant colour and imagery.

Entitled Metaphysics, it offers a visual reflection of the themes explored through the branch of philosophy that shares the same name: the study the nature of being and identity; of causality, and possibility; of space and time; of consciousness and the relationships between mind and matter; of potentiality and actuality. In other words, the fundamental nature of reality.

Or to put it another way, metaphysics asks questions such as Who Am I? Who are you? What is there? What is it like? Through her words and images, Bamboo offers her own explorations of these questions. Her words set the frame for the exhibition, her paintings and images standing visual essays on the ideas she presents in her words.

Though I’ve never drowned
There is a sense of drowning.
In a crowded train.
You are the only one on the train.
In the life of the person next to me.
His parents, whom I will probably never cross paths with, his family, whom I have never met, his childhood memories, joys and sorrows.
His family’s very separate friends, jobs, partners, and the loneliness and past they carry with them.
I am alone in the midst of it all, like a spreading ant’s nest.
I drown in it, the dark and bright air constricting me, and I gradually become a black spot.
Unable to open my eyes, I continue to watch the black dots disappear.

Thus, within the images we might find commentary on the nature of self; the causality of emotions on perception and outlook, and vice versa. And, ultimately whether we are ever really or genuinely joined as beings or is it merely an illusion brought about by these more esoteric interactions?

Because, how can we really be joined, share, unite, when ultimately, a part of us – our true inner self – forever stands apart, an observer, aloof, separated, able to ponder those questions free from the influences they seek to explore, but which actually govern and encompass every passing moment of life? A core being that forever sets us apart within ourselves; a part of society’s nest, but separated from it.

The images themselves are typical of Bamboo’s style: a marvellous mix of colour and form, each one captivating and eloquent in its expression of life and content, making this a further exhibition to be enjoyed for the art in its own sake, as well as for Bamboo’s explorations of self and reality.

SLurl Details

• Kondor Art Centre Main Gallery (Waka, rated Moderate)

I dropped in Kultivate Magazine’s Windlight Gallery in the week, which is recently opened its April ensemble exhibition and – for the time being – is hosting a long-running exhibition by Elise Sirnah on the upper level. The ensemble exhibition opened on April 10th, with the featured artists listed as Jaime Poutine, Carmelia (captainofmysoul resident), Lucas Tiros, Johannes Huntsman, Tempest Rosca and Veruca Tammas.

Occupying the centre and right sides of the exhibition space, these six present engaging mix of art bringing together avatar studies, SL landscapes and physical world art in a combination that immediately captures the eye. In this, I admit to being particularly drawn to the selection by Lucas Tiros, an artist whose work I don’t think I’ve encountered before (he states he’s been absent SL for a number of years and is now just returning, so that could be the reason why).

A professional photographer in the physical world, Lucas here presents ten images in what might be said to be three groups, all of which are utterly absorbing in their content, use of colour, expressiveness and emotion. From portraits through landscape to wildlife, these are ten pieces that carry within them a captivating deep of life and vitality.

While is not to say the work of the other artists is not also worthy of praise and appreciation; all offer much to admire as one come to them, and  – as noted – all six together offer a rich and complimentary mix of art that is guaranteed to please. This is also true of a further group of artists waiting to be found on the left side of the gallery’s lower floor.

Although not listed on the April exhibition advertising (and so might actually be from an earlier exhibit, and so might be subject to vanishing soon), Jamee Sandalwood, Reya Darkstone, Pam Astonia, Kalina Sands, Anouk Lefavre, Jesie Janick and Vanessa James all – at the time of my visit – added a further engaging mix of SL landscapes and avatar studies.

On the upper level of the gallery (again, as she noted above, at the time of my visit) Kultivate presents The Art of Elise Sinah, a selection of predominantly avatar-focused pieces mostly offered as moments-in-time photographs such as might be found in a personal album.

Some are joyous celebrations of life (Dog Walk, Penalty, Coffee, An Oasis), some are considered studies designed to further engage both the grey matter and the emotions (Head in Clouds, Thoughts, Cling, Friend Hugs) whilst other offer a more personal glimpse of life and desires (and for some might be considered NSFW). All, however, are beautifully lit, framed and post-processed to convey their narrative and depth, demonstrating the eye for balance and nuance that marks Elise’s work as both a photographer and region designer.

Two (or three, depending on your point of view!) exhibitions that are well worth viewing whilst they remain available!

SLurl Details

• Kultivate Windlight Gallery (Water Haven, rated Moderate)

Having opened on April 6th, 2022, Kicca Igaly and Nessuno Myoo present two intriguing installations at La Maison d’Aneli (curated by Aneli Abeyante) that stand a both individual pieces and as installations that might – in the mind of the visitor – also be intertwined in terms of theme and potential interpretation.

Before getting to the exhibits – both of which can be reached from the teleport disc at the gallery’s ground-level landing point – please note that to appreciate these installations fully, yo should ensure Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) is enabled and render quality is set to High (if your system can handle it) – both set through Preferences → Graphics, and that the viewer is also set to use the Shared Environment.

Within Pulsions, Kicca explores the idea that the human condition – the lives we lead and how we interact – is propelled by the decisions we make individually and collectively; pulsion itself being the act of driving forward (as opposed to being drawn forward involuntarily as a result of influences over which we have no direct control).

Within the setting, we are presented by scenes of everyday life: mothers with their children sharing a conversation; children at play, a mother and daughter passing a (presumably) homeless man asleep on a park bench; a tall man watching the children at play, and so on. Over the shoulders of each character float two little figures – their better angels (or positive pulsions) and darker demons (or negative pulsions) that drive their behaviour – whether or not a group conversation descends into gossip and rumour-spreading; whether a discussion remains calm and reasoned or descends into a heated, angry exchange; whether a game played remains friendly and fun or embroiled in bitterness on losing, and so on. By using the term pulsion, Kicca reminds us that the negative choices we make may not always be driven by a need to hurt or upset and so are not necessarily “evil” or “cruel” – although the tall figure watching the two youngsters also perhaps reminds us there can be intentional evil driving the decisions some make…

Within As Mammoths In The Middle Of Butterflies, Nessuno presents a single, stunning sculpture of the skeletal forms of two mammoths of unequal size apparently locked in combat, the smaller forced down onto its rear hunches and attempted to ward off a blow from the foreleg of the larger as it rears up on its hind legs in order to deliver the blow with greater force. Around both rises a cloud of butterflies, their peace and innocence shattered by the warring beasts.

Quite what we make of this is left entirely open to interpretation, the artist only stating At the sunset of existence, immersed in the wonder of its own nature. Thus, how we respond to the piece is entirely subjective. For my part, the use of mammoths (now long extinct) and the term “sunset of existence” suggests the piece can – and as with Kicca’s Pulsions –  be taken on a statement about the human condition.

That we are, for example, so polarised in views on subjects such as global warming and so focused on arguing about it, we cannot pause to address the fact that we really are disrupting the global ecosystem and hastening our own demise. Other might see it as a commentary on the the danger of the old truism “might is right”, that some countries have grown so arrogant in their own superiority and might, they care little about the manner in which the decisions they make can have shattering and disruptive impacts on others.

But rather than add further subjective thoughts of my own here, I’ll leave it to the sculpture to express itself to you. All I’ll say in closing is that once again, Kicca and Nessuno present two installations that engage both the eye and the mind.

 

SLurl Details

• La Maison d’Aneli (Virtual Holland, rated Moderate)