Category: Reviews

Currently open for viewing at Vally Ericson’s (Valium Lavender’s) Art Street Gallery is a small, engaging exhibition of art by Purple Leonis (Nel4481). Entitled Dark Paradise, it comprises just ten images (more’s the pity, given the gallery space and the beauty of the art), each of which is rich in motif and story, touching on period settings and fantasy.

I have always enjoyed Purple’s work, as she always uses pose, colour, light and setting in her images to communicate with us by painting an entire story within each image. It is an approach Purple uses to both provide single-framed narratives and entire tales spread across multiple images. Within Dark Paradise, she provides a mix of both.

On entering the wing of the gallery where the exhibition is framed, one encounters a trio of images, a couple in formal wear, he standing, she sitting, in a traditional photographic pose oft seen in the early days of photograph, a closer shot of the woman seen in the first image, this time with her eyes covered by what appears to be a jewel-encrusted mask, and the third a woman in red, surrounded by billowing waves of red fabric. All three are in many respects “classic” portraits and might be taken as such.

From here the images change in tone, becoming more fanciful – and I use this word in terms of “fantasy” – as we progress, introducing magical motifs (mushrooms, ravens); genuine flights of fancy (drifting on a bunch of hand-held balloons), to genuine trips of fantasy (alien creatures, centaurs) and finally a series suggestive of vampires. Thus, we appear to have thematically frame images that exist individually or in smaller groups connected by theme (the couple and the woman in the first two images, the vampire theme in the final three).

However, all ten images are linked in a broader theme: the entire setting suggests that we are within a room within a grand house; the pictures of the walls a mix of family portraits and strangely themed images chosen by whoever live here – perhaps the couple in the first image.

Thus we have something of a sense of the familial here, while the furnishings, colours and fixtures learn into the Gothic in a way, leading us toward the vampiric elements in the final three images, and so we’re gently led into the idea we are perhaps in a dream, an unfolding story, progressing from the first image which (either deliberately or not is down to the artist to say) is called The Beginning, and progressing around the final trio and their darker theme of blood and death / the undead.

True, some of the images appear out-of-place to theis core vampire idea – floating on a bunch of balloons, centaurs, strange creatures – but how many dreams are entirely linear and without non-sequitur flashes? Plus, look at the tone of the more fantastical images: the centaur is linked to death (and thus the undead), for example, the monster in Cavaliere could be mindful of a vampire in its “true” form as beloved of monster movies) so even these images are perhaps not so far removed from the idea that we are entering the dark paradise of dreams and imagination.

I would have personally preferred to have seen this exhibition continued through more of the gallery space, such is the depth of narrative in the images, but don’t let the brevity put you off; Dark Paradise is a thoroughly engaging pocket exhibition.

SLurl Details

• Art Street Gallery (Valium SL 1, rated Moderate)

Update, June 27th, 2022: Art Korner has Closed.

Wednesday, March 9th, 2022 saw the opening of an exhibition at Frank Atisso’s Art Korner Main Gallery that features images by two artists on a shared theme, but which are strikingly different in their style and visual impact.

The artists in question are Dannika Dryke and Traci (Traci Ultsch), who have split the gallery between themselves, with Danni’s images located on the lower floor, and Traci’s on the upper. The central theme is that of portraits, but the two styles offered by the artists are extraordinarily different.

On the lower level, Danni presents a series of large format images that might been seen as “traditional” modern portraits: the subject the centre of the image sans and background distractions, (largely) minimal visible posing, the colours clean and natural in tone. These are images that allow us to focus solely on the subject, drawing us into a study of their look and appearance and – oh, so gently – into a wider consideration of their nature as revealed (or imposed, depending on your viewpoint) by the pose they have struck.

These are picture that speak to the art of photography as form of modern portraiture that has largely taken over from the more formalised use of paint and canvas to immortalise an individual. With most images presented as head and shoulders / chest level, they reveal the avatar-as-a-person, someone who exists independently from any human operator behind the screen. Within the eyes, we can perceive life and mood, within the expression there lies emotion and and intelligence, within the choice of clothing a glimpse of character and nature. Such is the depth of life within each image, were the subject to lean out of the monitor and offer an introduction, it wouldn’t be in the least bit surprising!

Life and vitality are also very much in evidence in the images presented by Traci on the gallery’s upper level – but in a very different way. Where Danni opts to go the more “traditional” route of portraiture, Traci leans into a more expressive presentation, the images swept with brush-like swirls of light or splattered with dark tones a-la Pollock or stamped with blocks of Warhol-esque colour to present bold statement of life in which the entire image speaks – subject, colour, contrast – to present not so much the individual, but the sense of mood / emotion, and presence / vitality of the subject.

These are images in which there is a lot going on, the very depth of elements drawing us into each picture, not so much to decrypt or understand it, but simply to flow with the narrative as it forms ideas and stories that are as unique and individual as the images and their colours.

Taken individually, each of these displays of art has much to attract the eye; taken together, and they offer a marvellous juxtaposition and conjoining of style and content that is  wholly engaging.

SLurl Details

• Art Korner Main Gallery (Deju, rated Moderate)

What is it to take a picture?

I ask that to myself and I let that question absorb me subconsciously, continuously as I render what I see into a frame so that elements of composition, light and background fuse in a balance in dependent from the subject.

The subject means nothing. 

– from the introduction of RealUnreal

What is the real nature of a photograph? Once upon a time, cameras and photographs were a means to freeze a moment in time; a memory, something that might become an instant marked in history or a simple sharing of a family activity, a moment of friendship or love or something else.

Today, however, almost everyone has a camera at their fingertips. From the advent of the basic point-and-click “instant” camera through the rise of digital camera to the merging of camera and cellphone / smartphone, we have all become photographers. And with the increase in digital editing software readily accessed through ‘phone and computer, we have all become self-styled digital artists. Further, such is the skill we have developed in using such post-processing editing tools that it perhaps prompts the question: how much of an image remains true – remains real – to its subject, and how much is “unreal”, the result of the photographer imposing their subjective interpretation of their subject through cropping, light and colour adjustments, changes in focus, and other editorial techniques?

These are some of the questions posed in  a new exhibition of images  by Axiomatic Clarity, gathered from both the physical world and Second Life, which is currently on display at Eviana Robbiani’s Vibes Gallery. The title of the exhibition is RealUnreal – which itself references the fact the images offered are from both the physical and virtual realms.

Although the methodology is a good compromise it still does not grasp what I am looking at. Do I know what that is, do I like how it manifests, do I let it change myself?

– from the introduction of RealUnreal

Across the three gallery halls and the spaces between, Axiom presents a marvellous collection of predominantly black-and-white or monochrome images, with two of the halls focused on images from the physical world, and one on images from Second Life. They are all evocative; all have a story to tell. They challenge us to see them as images offered for display and how the artist arrived at their finished appearance; that is, what is the reality of their focus and content, and how much is “unreal” – the result of that subjective imposition placed on each by the artist through the editorial process? Indeed, what does each say about the artist’s approach to photography and developing a balance between the subject of each image, and the story the photographer feels drawn to tell?

Is it possess[ion], is it obsession, is it a form of growth?

The deeper to discriminate at a deeper and abstract level, a level where the photographic language borders the inexpressible and even replaces the subject entirely … and I tentatively find that balance.

– from the introduction of RealUnreal

These are complex questions, worthy of being pondered given they are central to the photographer’s approach and execution of their art, with RealUnreal mixing fabulously expressive we have a complex, visually compelling selection of art that draws us into the questions of “reality” vs. “unreality” and the drives that govern a photographer in the creation of their art.

SLurl Details

• Vibes Gallery (Isola Del Giglio, rated: Adult)