A recent visit took me to Psygallery, operated and curated by Twister Grut, for a couple of small exhibitions by two well-known Second Life artists: Ilyra Chardin and Deyanira Yalin which, while individual in content, do compliment one another quite nicely.
Located in the lower level hall facing the landing point, Ilyra presents Once Upon a Where, a selection of her original paintings reproduced in-world. This comprises a series of nine images located around a central sculpture – Time in a Bottle -, which nicely encapsulates the central theme of the exhibition: fairy tales, stories and flights of the imagination.
The images are all mixed digital media finished in the style of paintings, eight of which plumb the depths of visual storytelling to great effect, with the ninth forms a superb life study of a coastal bird bearing the title Not All Who Wander Are Lost, which. The latter, depending on your perspective, might call to mind Tolkien, Shakespeare or perhaps Lana Del Rey. Whichever might come to mind, there is no denying that the title fits the images perfectly allowing the imagination to take flight – if you will – in thoughts of the subject’s life on the wing, and where it might have journeyed from and journey onwards to.
Accessed via the teleport board is Col-or-ing, a series of vividly striking images by Deyanira Yalin. This is a richly diverse selection of pieces all joined one to another by equally vivid narrative content as well as their sheer beauty. As with Once Upon a Where in the gallery space below, the eleven images are framed around a central sculpture by Deyanira, a piece as rich in colour, and with a life and motion which matches the vitality of the digital paintings.
The latter – as is all of Deyanira’s art – are immediately captivating in tone, content and style. Each speaks to its narrative equally as strongly the next, but I confess I was very much drawn to Africa, Lady Under a Red Moon, and In My Room – the latter very cleverly bringing a certain literal interpretation of the old metaphorical idiom about elephants and rooms in a most delightful manner. Africa, meanwhile, caught my eye as an expression not just of natural beauty, but a beauty encompassing the whole of the temperate African continent.
That said, all eleven pieces within Col-or-ing are attractive and engaging, the stories waiting within them – as noted above – joining this exhibition with Ilyra’s as eye-catching expression of storytelling through art.
SLurl Details
- PsyGallery (Charm, rated Adult)
Originally published in 1995 as Northern Lights, The Golden Compass forms the first volume in Philip Pullman’s multiverse-spanning trilogy His Dark Materials.
Born into a time shortly after the Romans have departed Britain, now once again divided into a series of kingdoms, Myrddin Emrys, also known as Merlin, is the illegitimate son of a Welsh princess, who refuses to name his father. Small for his age and often abused or neglected, Merlin occasionally has clairvoyant visions which, together with his unknown parentage cause him to be referred to as “the son of a devil” and “bastard child”.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 