Currently open at La Maison d’Aneli Gallery, curated by Aneli Abeyante, is a new ensemble art exhibition featuring 2D artists Cybele Moon (Hana Hoobinoo), Violaine (Anadonne) and Barret Darkfold, together with 3D artists Nevereux and Rikku Yalin. This is an eclectic mix of artists, resulting in a diverse set of exhibitions, reached by taking the teleport from the gallery’s ground level lobby area.
Cybele Moon’s art should need no introduction; she is a doyenne of fantasy art / photography in Second Life, producing marvellous images that are richly ethereal, fabulously produced and each rich in its own story. Her art within Second Life is very a reflection of her photography in the physical world, where she captures landscapes – sometimes using an infra-red camera – and produces mythical scenes of extraordinary depth and life.
Many of the pieces she displays in-world combine the physical and virtual worlds to create wonderfully layered pictures which offer not so much a windows into narrative, but doorways into entire realms; stories often captured in words and pictures on her website, Cybele Shine. She says of her work, “I’m a time traveller who loves exploring old stones and tomes and forest groves. My dreams are filled with enchanted children and haunted woodlands,” and this is perfectly reflected in the selection of images she is displaying a La Maison d’Aneli.
On the lower floor of the gallery are exhibitions of physical world art by Violaine and Barret, two artists I’ve not encountered before, but each with a distinctive style.
Violaine presents a mix of art and photograph (some of which touches on NSFW) grouped in deliberate sets of four, from abstracts (as with the set entitled Instants), through to deeply intimate moments (as captured within the set entitled Neighbours). Each set has its own unique attraction, be it a recollection of Warhol through Angelina, or an echo of L.S. Lowry seen in Houses.
Barret’s work is wholly abstract, featuring pieces of swirling motion or carrying hints of linear geometry. The majority are presented a warm colours: yellow and orange with a hint of red in places, or with earthly browns and greens, although some are more earthen in colour, encompassing paler shades and tans. All hold a common bond, one with another, something than gives this exhibition an almost narrative flow as the eye pass from one images to the next and from upper row to lower.
For her 3D installation, Nevereux presents Assembly Line, a piece that places the visitor inside a 3D drawing, asking a series of pointed questions as it does so. These questions, asked within a blank verse statement, encompass the nature of identity and the content of life. The art within the piece serves as an illustration of life: two-dimensional aspects: a house, a street a place of work, a children’s playground, rendered as 3D (our digital life of 0s and 1s referenced in the blank verse) by the movement, of a pencil across white surfaces (“what if we’re analogue?”).
It’s a curious piece, a little difficult to grasp, but also – perhaps – with a touch of self-effacing humour (“You can align yourself to me instructions … or you can use binoculars + an aspirin and go explore”).
Rikku Yalin offers another curio of an installation, largely focused on 3D pieces of a decidedly mechanical bent – including a giant robot, a mechanical cat, smaller robots – all gathered around wooden couple standing as ringmaster and wife. 2D art on the walls in part continue the mechanical theme.
However, for me, the most striking piece, for all the quirkiness of the rest, is a stunning portrait of the late actor Charles Bronson. It’s a stunning piece which, aside from the moustache, could have been painted while he was on the set of Sergio Leone’s celebrated western, Once Upon A Time in the West.
Five very different displays offering five unique perspectives of art and narrative, all of which add up to one intriguing exhibition.
SLurl Details
- La Maison d’Aneli (Virtual Holland, rated: Moderate)
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