As I write this, it is a little over nine months since Aneli Abeyante announced that her long-running Second Life Art gallery, La Maison d’Aneli would be closing at the end of its (then) new exhibition, which opened on December 14th, 2022. However, passions, ideas and creativity tend not to always behave or turn out as we planned, and frequently have a habit of demanding release even when we think otherwise.
Here I am at the end of my adventure as a gallery owner, of course I will stay on Second Life as a simple artist … I thank all the people who accompanied me …. what a beautiful adventure we have shared, more than twelve years with an exhibition per month, and you always there. Long live creation!
– Aneli Abeyante, December 2022
In Aneli’s case – and to our good fortune – La Maison d’Aneli refused to simply pass into Second Life history, and instead insisted she continue to breathe life into it and allow it to continue to bring regular ensemble exhibitions. And so it is that, on September 27th, 2023, the gallery officially re-opened with a set of five individual exhibitions by noted SL artists.
Occupying a location pretty close to (if not right on top of) that of the last iteration of itself, La Maison d’Aneli once again offers its familiar ground-level landing point, complete with event venue and exhibition hub. The latter presents direct teleports to each of the current exhibitions in progress, while a separate additional teleport disk network allows for quick transfers between allow five and a return to the ground level.
For its re-opening, the gallery features exhibitions by Asperix Asp, Xirana Oximoxi, Morlita Quan, Deyanira Yalin and Aneli herself. Given the names involved, you can be sure that these are exhibits that will engage both eye and mind, and it is recommended that they are each visited under the default Shared Environment and with Advanced Lighting Model enabled.
Asperix Asp is a digital artist hailing from Spain and who has been creating and displaying his digital artwork since 1985, not long after trade more traditional methods of artistic expression for the keyboard, mouse, monitor screen and other tools of the digital age. His work has been critically acclaimed and award-winning, and over time has grown from purely 2D to encompass 3D modelling and seeking expression through diverse natural inspiration – such as via paludarium (a type of vivarium incorporating both terrestrial and aquatic aspects). From 2007 through 2014 he explored and exhibited his work within virtual spaces such as Second Life, before taking a leave of absence through until 2020.
Within this exhibition he presents a selection of his fractal art under the title Demiurgia. It comprises sixteen quite exquisite pieces, each one exhibiting the beauty of finely-crafted jewellery. But whether each image is that of an individual piece, or represents the focus on a single facet of a much larger piece, is impossible to say; each image is unique unto itself, yet all are bound one to another through the subtle use of colour, tone, form and finish.
Two-dimensional art they may be; but there is something fundamentally tactile captured within each one, as if in reaching out to them we could feel the soft cold/warmth of the metal, the tiny crystal-like roughness of the filigrees and burnished peaks and troughs formed by the turn of the metals. These are pieces we can see are formed through the artistry of a true artesian – and in that, the title for the exhibition has been well chosen.
Hailing from Catalonia, Xirana Oximoxi is an artist whose work is very much driven by a mix of her experiences, moods and outlook, informed by impressions and reflections on the world at large. As such, her work is constantly in flux, often being driven by the words on the printed page or as a result of a day’s reflections or through research into ideas and explorations of new means of expressionism.
With the Undefined, she presents reflections on the relationship between an artist – in this case a cartoonist – and the characters they create. It’s a story itself told in the form of a comic strip. It is very much driven by that process of discovery, research and expression. As Xirana notes in introducing it:
The comic strips tell stories of everyday life, dreams, fantasies and thoughts. The main objective is to learn how to create cartoons by doing it and also to make the reader smile. They are inspired by nonsense, by that is silly and illogical and by the Theatre of the Absurd.
– Xirana Oximoxi
However, within this flow of apparent light-heartedness runs a deeper pondering: who is ultimately in control of things? The cartoonist or the characters and creations to which they give birth and form? Is it the artist who drives the creative process – or the creative process which drives the artist?
Morlita Quan is a multi-faceted artist I’ve long admired, having written about her art and installations within Second Life on numerous occasions within this blog. As a musician and recording artist specialising in experimental music, she has achieved considerable success. Starting in 2008 and continuing through to the present, she has particularly sought to combine music and other art forms utilising emerging technologies, often collaborating with numerous Fine Arts universities and also with other artists – be they visual, musical, spoken word or performance.
As a visual artist, Morlita has followed a similar path of experimentation with genres, techniques, subjects and forms (both 2D and 3D), as well as seeking to collaborate with other artists in both physical and virtual spaces. Here she presents a broad cross-section of her work: abstract paintings, 3D pieces, photographs; studies of the natural and still life captures brought together in a compelling and stunningly fluid selection of work.
“Experimentalist” is a term which might also be used with Deyanira Yalin. Having begun her artistic journey painting in oils and acrylics and participating in physical world expositions in Mexico City, the years she expanded her technique and portfolio, firstly through other canvas-based media prior to embracing digital means to explore new opportunities and potentials – something which brought her to Second Life.
More recently – and like many artists in L and beyond – she has more recently started to experiment with the Midjourney AI tool, about which she notes:
It is a new platform for artists to express what we think and how we visualize the piece. It has made a significant impact on me and my creativeness, and you will see that influence in some of these pieces in the exhibit. But, I add my own personal touch and interpretation with Photoshop to each piece to give it my artistic personalisation.
– Deyanira Yalin
Like many, I am admittedly ambivalent about Midjourney and its growing popularity, largely as a result of the blasé attitude those behind the application have towards matters of copyright and fair use (a criticism not limited to Midjourney, to be sure).
However, like any tool, the key to something like Midjourney is how it is employed and what the user – artist or otherwise – brings to the table for use alongside Midjourney in order to create art, rather than simply combine images from other sources to meet a descriptive requirement (which is essentially what Midjourney does). In this, Deyanira demonstrates she brings a lot to the table by way of her own artistry and talent, as the pieces offered in her exhibition at la Maison Aneli demonstrate.
For her exhibition Aneli takes us into a 3D world of animated prims and images. There is not a lot to say about this installation – not because it lacks for description, but rather because its geometry and form should be seen and appreciated rather than merely described
SLurl Details
- La Maison d’Aneli (Virtual Holland, rated Moderate)
- Asperix Asp
- Xirana Oximoxi
- Morlita Quan
- Deyanira Yalin
- Aneli Abeyante
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 