Category: Reviews

Currently on display at the Palazzo di Basilique, the skyborne gallery space at Basilique, is a joint exhibition by April (Agleo Runningbear) and Loegan Magic, two very different but very engaging artists.

Loegan has been active in Second Life for over a decade, but has been engaged in Second Life photography for the last two years – and has made a stunning impression on the scene in that time. His work is richly evocative and wrapped in narrative – often on a personal level, featuring as it can images of himself in setting that simply speak volumes.

For this exhibit, he provides a selection of monochrome images he refers to as Vintage Virtual, which he describes as, “photo’s taken in a virtual world using today’s technology with the purpose of creating something that has a nostalgic feel.” To call these enchanting pieces would be an understatement: each more than succeeds in Loegan’s aim, offering a picture that holds that sense of nostalgia / history; these are pieces that give the strongest impression of looking back into past times, times that might have been familiar to our grandparents.

They are also pieces that are personal in nature. Each is accompanied by a text element that offers words to the story found within the image. Most have been composed by Loegan, these are revealing in their depth, reflecting as several do on his own life and his relationship with his SL partner, Rachel Magic (larisalyn). Even those with a wider context – such as the lyrics from Pink Floyd’s Bike strongly suggest a personal element.

Known as April Louise Turner in the the physical world, Agleo is a woman of many colours – artist, shaman, teacher, poetess, to name but four – who presents her work under her own name and the title ArtShifter. She is a gifted portrait artist and caricaturist, as she demonstrates here with a selection of thirteen portraits of well-known celebrities, all of whom should be instantly familiar.

With pieces created between 2013 and 2020, this an engaging series of images that capture the very essence of their subjects. From Argentinian surrealist painter, designer and author Leonor Fini, to a blue-tinted Yves Saint Laurent (a piece I’m still a little embarrassed to say put me in mind of Isaac Asimov when I first saw it from a reasonable distance at La Maison d’Aneli earlier in the year), they really are marvellous, graceful images, the majority of which prove the old saying that the eyes are the windows of the soul, the sense of depth within the eyes Bowie, Mercury, Dali, Nicholson and Fini is quite stunning.

Presented in collaboration with Focus Magazne and gallery, these are two very different displays of art from two very different artists that also perfectly compliment one another. Loegan’s art can be found at  the front of the gallery ballroom, above the terrace, with April’s work on the terrace at the back of the gallery ballroom.

SLurl Details

• Palazzo di Basilique (Basilique, rated Adult)

Now available at her Immersiva arts region, is Bryn Oh’s latest presentation Mythical Creatures, which is will have an official opening on Sunday, July 19th, 2020.

Perhaps the best way to describe this collection of 21 pieces is as a series of art collectibles, in that they come with a unique property, which I’ll get to shortly.

This was a fun project where I researched 20 legendary, mythical or creatures of folklore from around the world and re-imagined them. Some are well known such as the Dragon or Phoenix, but then there are more obscure ones like the Nariphon or the horrifying Manananngal.

– Bryn Oh on Mythical Creatures

Each creature is presented as a 3D sculpture on a plinth bearing a brief description of the creature’s form. More detailed descriptions of the creatures and their histories, drawn from multiple sources, hang from the ceiling of the hall behind each of the sculptures. As Bryn notes, some of the creatures are very well known; others may ring bells without necessarily being something we’re actually deeply familiar with, whilst others are liable to be entirely new to us. For me, examples of the latter two would be the Baba Yaga – something I’d heard of, but not actually researched, and the Tatzelwurm, a creature I’d never heard of.

As well as the Russian Baba Yaga and Swiss Tatzelwurm mentioned above, the collection comprises: from Greek / Roman mythologies Capricorn, Cerberus, the griffin, Medusa, and the phoenix; from Japanese mythology: Jorōgumo, Kitsune and Ōmukade; from multiple folklores and mythologies: the dragon and the mermaid; together with the banshee (Irish mythology), the ettin, the kraken (Scandinavian), La Sayona (from Venezuela), the manananggal (Philippines), the nariphon (Buddhist legend), the Canadian Ogopogo, and the Chinese qilin.

And in case you’re wondering why I reference 21 pieces, but only list 20 creatures, that’s because there is a bonus item in the collection, the Bryn Oh.

Bryn Oh is a pale white moth girl born on the Internet. She has curved glowing horns, cyberpunk interface plugs, wings or a neko tail. She is queen of the moths and creates stories and worlds with hidden meaning inside. She has magic and when threatened she can deform her enemies or launch them high in the air. She is drawn to music but often lurks on the outside listening and never dancing. Other creatures find her strange an melancholy.

– the description of the “Bryn Oh”

What is special about these creature is the manner in which they have been created in two parts: “left” and “right” as you look at each of them. Gacha machines within the exhibition halls allow visitors to obtain a random “left” or “right” half of a creature. Any “left” part of a creature can be combined with any “right” part of another creature to create an entirely new one. The clever part here is that whichever combination of to parts is put together, the descriptive text on the two plinth halves will always seamlessly combine to offer a description of the new creature.

Thus, it is possible to creature any of the original creatures in the exhibition by collecting all of the different halves – with up to 441 combinations of creature to be created. Further, to help in the joining process, the individual halves have been scripted so that when placed together, they will correctly align and join.

Another interesting aspect of these creatures is the sources Bryn has drawn upon to creature their “mini biographies” hanging in the exhibition halls, and the manner in which set portrays some of them. With Medusa, for example, the focus is very much on her violation at the hands of Posidon – and for which Athena unfairly punished the young and beautiful girl, turning her into the monster with whom we are more familiar.

As noted, Mythical Creatures officially opens on Sunday, July 19th, 2020, with a special event starting at 15:00 SLT. Skye Galaxy will be providing the music, supported by Semiiina. And when visiting, keep an eye open for Bryn’s flying machines that have appeared in her own mythologies and her floating / falling bricks that have also featured in her past work, and both of which – together with the design of the exhibition hall, very much hook Mythical Creatures into her universe.

SLurl Details

• Mythical Creatures (Immersiva, rated Moderate) – follow the arrows on arrival.

Now open on the Green Pavilion 1 platform at Akim Alonzo’s Itakos Gallery, is Bunkers are Us, by Kaiju Kohime. A 3D installation, it is a reflection on modern life, that in part draws on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, but casts its net much wider.

All of us need shelter. It can be a house, a tent, a church. But the past few decades we have increasingly isolated ourselves from others in ever more fortified houses with increasing security and locks. Because of the the increasing amount of threats that are bestowed upon us, like wars, climate change, exponential population growth and fast spreading diseases we have become less confident in our fellow human beings. We have retreated behind concrete masks, concrete skins, concrete bunkers.

Our last shelter is our skin. We hide inside our skin. But not only are we fortifying our houses, are we not becoming bunkers ourselves as well?

– Kaiju Kohime

On the platform is a reflection of the above description: three large concrete homes with gun-like slits for windows, together with two smaller bunkers and a cathedral, its original form shown in rusting outline, the building itself having shrunk within the framework as physical representation of the idea of withdrawal away from the world.

The houses contain within them various elements: violins, concrete blocks that might be books, flowers, ladders that climb nowhere… They are perhaps the things we take with us into our solitude in lieu of genuine company, and perhaps – in the case of the ladders and the female form – reminders of the freedoms and companionships we lose in so shutting ourselves off from others.

Projected onto the walls of the building are the words of Proposition 1 from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Austrian-British logic philosopher Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (if you do not see the words of the proposition, make sure you enable your viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) via Preferences → Graphics). The only one of his works to be published in his lifetime, TLP, as it is often called, was an attempt to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science, and is regarded as one of the more significant philosophical works of the twentieth century.

Within this installation, the use of Proposition 1 would appear to be a direct challenge to the manner in which we are all increasingly self-isolating, an attempt to remind us that back contracting inwards, we limit ourselves, that the world is all that is, is becoming ever more finite thanks to our willingness to withdraw and the facts that help us interpret, understand, and live within that world are similarly become more finite, thus limiting our world view even further.

It is symbolism like this, found throughout Bunkers Are Us, that makes this installation provocative, be it through consideration of how our slide towards isolationism – which started well before SARS-CoV-2 reared its head -, or our mistrust of those around us that causes us to convert our houses into castles and has reduced churches from places that welcomed everyone to closed fortresses where only the known few are welcome; or through the manner in which it brings us into contact with Wittgenstein; or simply through the wonder of the mobile sculptures within the smaller bunkers.

With further subtle commentary in the form of the two Animesh figures located at the teleport station (echoes of simplier times when the world was our home?), Bunkers are Us is an installation that pokes at the conscience and grey matter.

SLurl Details

ATL is rated Moderate

• Green Pavilion 1 platform
• Itakos Porject main landing point (use the teleport door within the main gallery foyer)

The Third Eye, curated by Jaz (Jessamine2108), is a new open-air gallery space that opened on July 11th, 2020. Located on a sky platform, the gallery is described as “a place that is designed to showcase art, particles, inspire stories, and offer a quiet place to relax and rejuvenate. It is the culmination of my many dreams – to create a place that nurtures and helps the growth of all types of creative endeavours – be it words, pictures, or particles.”

For the opening exhibition, the gallery features a selection of art by Jaz, entitled Awakening, coupled with Virtual Cities, a selection of pieces by Michel Bechir.

It is only right that I open the gallery with Michiel as the guest artist, as he was the one who introduced me to SL photography.

– Jaz (Jessamine2108)

For Virtual Cities, Michel presents some 18 pieces focused on urban living within Second Life. It’s a rich mix of images spread across Michel’s time as a Second Life photographer, starting in 2009 and extending to the present day. Within them, he captures the many different ways in which cities and living spaces can be represented in-world, from shining cities with gleaming skyscrapers to cities in decay, from Mediterranean waterfronts to the cramped confines of the favela, and from cobble streets to paved sidewalks.

Not only are the pieces here attractive for their breadth of representation of urban spaces, they also hold the eye because of the richness of style and finish they each have.

Sitting across the landing point from Virtual Cities, Jaz offers 21 pieces that see states are something of a departure for her.

The series “Awakening” is about my changing perception of SL – to the possibilities that it offers and to be able to see beyond the surface. I am stepping out of my comfort zone to communicate using the creations of designers rather than use landscapes and avatars. I would like to thank the mesh creators Harry Cover and Karthikeyan Engineer with their quirky and cool creations that helped me grow as an artist.

– Jaz (Jessamine2108)

This is an intriguing and engaging collection of images, rich with colour, each one perfectly framed to draw the eye into it. There are four pieces within this collection that might be called “traditional” landscapes – or at least focus on subjects Jaz has more familiarly covered. However, this doesn’t put them at odds with the rest of the pieces on display, rather it grounds them as a further expression of her art and growth.

SLurl Details

• Third Eye Gallery (Midnight Sanctum, rated Moderate)