Tag: Art 2022

Update: December 15th: Aneli has announced the exhibitions below will be the last for La Maison d’Aneli

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!

– From a note sent out by Aneli Abeyante

The exhibition below will remain open through to January 14th, 2023. Aneli also notes that the La Maison d’Aneli group will remain open for people to share information on their artistic events and exhibitions.  

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December 14th, 2022 sees the official opening of five new exhibitions to see out the year at La Maison d’Aneli, curated by Aneli Abeyante. Produced and presented by five artists with highly individual skills and outlook, they present an intriguing mix that can engaging, amuse, possibly confuse, and provoke – and all of which are now available for viewing ahead of the formal opening.

Before going into specifics, when visiting all of these exhibitions, do make sure you have Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled in your viewer (Preferences → Graphics → make sure Advanced Lighting Model is checked); although shadows do not have to also be enabled, so you can set the drop-down to No Shadows to reduce the rendering load. Also note also that this piece includes SLurls for teleporting directly to each exhibition.

Yann Gyro (sempiternel) is an artist whose work I do not recall having come across before, so his 3D installation at La Masion d’Aneli came as a new experience for me, being a piece I had difficultly in interpreting. Predominantly greyscale / black-and-white in nature, it appears to comprise multiple elements which at first seem to have no connection: a bridge wit water running over it and a broken egg below; black snow falling from a white sky, a series of heads in various stages of being drawn, a female head gazing upwards through a hail of falling musical notes and with a starscape and astronaut floating within, a map of the world formed by irregular blocks mounted on an irregular grid, and so on. Footsteps on the ground provide a guide to exploring the installation – and should be followed. But how might it be interpreted?

I eventually concluded this is a piece about finding balance. That on the one hand we have been given the gifts of evolution, creativity and the power to shape our own future (symbolised by the evolving heads, the musical notes falling from the sky; the dream of space travel an our quest to understand the cosmos contained within the female head; and the figure rising within the double helix); whilst on the other, those same gifts can result in environmental and physical destruction (the falling black snow; the shattering bridge and broken egg; the flower in the bell jar). Thus comes the suggestion that should we fail to balance these two sides in the manner of a gyroscope, they we will inevitably wobble, falter, and fail to keep to the true path of our potential.

ZackHerrMann, meanwhile, presents a further chapter in the life of his alter-ego Linda Cluster in celebration of art and music, using the virtual immersion of Second Life to recreate his physical world works representing Linda Cluster to give them greater depth and visual appeal.

Vibrant in their use of colour, animations and sue of geometry and symmetry, be aware that some of the surfaces within this installation are media-enabled, so be sure to click the “movie camera” icon in the top right of the viewer window to make sure media is enabled (you do not need to have the audio stream enabled, as this applies to the gallery as a whole (unless to want to).

Drawing is above all my favourite discipline, because everything starts from drawing. It’s the idea, it’s the mood, it’s the choice, and all artistic work begins with a drawing. For me, drawing expresses the gift of self, communicating the sensitivity, character, and sentiment of the individual. 

– Thanos Runner

Using his own words is perhaps the best way to introduce Livlic Ateliers by Thanos Runner. A multi-talented artist who prefers to focus on the human body and produce portraits of those he encounters through the medium of drawing rather than painting or digital composition.

His work is utterly captivating in the manner in which he captures his subjects and brings to the fore the beauty which can be called forth through the use of graphite lines on what paper by the skilled hand. At the same time his offers a richness of dialogue on the human form through his coloured images as they celebrate the human body.

Located in northern Tuscany, the Apuan Alps are renown for their  Carrara marble, the most quarried marble it the world and used since Roman times for monumental sculpture and in architecture, but which today sees much of the 9 million tonnes quarried annually devoted to the production of toothpaste – and in the process is devastating the mountains at an accelerated rate.

As a native of the region, Onceagain (Manoji Yachvili) presents Cave Hominem, a series of photographs of the quarrying operations as a pictorial diary of the destruction being wrought for Second Life users to absorb. Offered in monochrome shading which enhances the rude damage being wrought on a daily basis – damage which she notes has led to visible changes in the look of mountains from her home – and set within an environment reflective of that encountered within the quarries themselves, this is an exhibition encompassing environmental damage we all too willingly inflict on the world around us which rings out as loudly as the roar, clang and bang of the instruments and tools of destruction used to wreck the Apuans and lay claim to their rock.

With As Above, So Below, Traci Ultsch complete the circle of exhibitions by presenting an installation that is left open to interpretation in a manner similar to that of Yann Gyro’s at the top of this article. It is also a piece where, again, having ALM enabled is absolutely essential (otherwise all you’ll see is the inside of a white cube!). Presented in monochrome, eye-pipingly visual (perhaps literally so in the case of the main image?) I am at a loss to describe this work – so I’ll instead urge you to go see it for yourself, together with the other four exhibits herein reviewed.

The official opening for all five exhibitions will take place at 12:30 SLT on Wednesday, December 14th, 2022, with music provided by Traci Ultsch.

SLurl Details

• La Maison d’Aneli (Virtual Holland, rated Moderate)

Enchanted Garden is the title Mareea Farrasco has given to a small exhibition of her own work available at her IMAGOLand gallery. Comprising just 10 paintings reproduced within Second Life, it is nevertheless an engaging exhibition, taking visitors literally and figuratively on a walk through a garden whilst asking a question.

The paintings are of a classical nature, encompassing themes and styles familiar to any lover of art: nature, women in flowing gowns, hints of faery and fantasy, ideals of love and marriage, summer days with fields of flowers and lavender, and so on. They are presented with a dream-like finish, the haze and soft form suggesting horizons and ideals which extend far beyond the edge of the canvas.

Looking at these images, it is hard not to see within them the echoes of great painters mixed with the imagination of a modern-day dreamer with the rich range of image manipulation tools at her disposal and an imagination capable of carrying us on the wings of story to wherever our own imaginations and dreams choose to alight.

At least three of the pieces paint a story of their own: one of a wedding, the bride and her maids – possible post-ceremony – caught in moments of contemplation (or lightness) within a garden. Posed they might be, as all such wedding photographs are, they encompass both s sense of the romantic painters of a bygone age and the artificial construct of a posed photograph in a manner that might be seen through a certain lens as, well, kitsch.

It’s a sense evident within the other paintings to different degrees, and in using the term I am not in any way denigrating Mareea’s work; for in presenting these pieces, she asks us to define what is kitsch.

Often used in a pejorative manner to express the feeling that a piece of art – visual, written or musical – is naïve, overly-eccentric, gratuitous, or of banal taste. “Kitsch” is a term that at its height became – ironically – somewhat passé, the means by which not so much to pass a critique but to demonstrate our own hipness. However, the term has other connotations; some kitsch art can, for example, be appreciated for the irony or humour or quirky nature without it being visually offensive.

More particularly, Kitsch as a statement has been around for long enough that it might itself be considered an aesthetic category and style of its own; and it is this idea Mareea explores through these ten images. For while they may well encompass themes and elements we might – in different ways – require as “kitsch”: the flowers in the hair, the “soft focus”, the posed nature, the themes of gardens and faeries, there can be no denying that each piece within this collection is beautifully executed as a work of art, and the pieces collective are an expression of art and talent that is richly evocative. As an adjunct to this, Mareea also asks us to consider kitsch more widely, pointing our thinking – if we are so inclined – towards how it might be considered as broadly as within the topic of politics…

However, I’ll leave that for you to discover and close this piece by saying this is a engaging, easy-to-view selection of art, whether you opt to see it in its own light, or through the lens Mareea casts upon it in her introduction.

SLurl Details

•  IMAGOLand Gallery (Stairways to Heaven rated Moderate)

Currently open through December 2022 is Cyborgs, an installation by Austrian artist Sophie de Saint Phalle (Perpetua1010) located within her Subcutan Art region  At its heart Copper plate etchings and lithographs, although they are framed in a much broader story.

Leave the security and assurance of your spoiled civilization and immerse yourself in the fantastic and futuristic world of Cyborgs and dangerous creatures.

– Cyborgs by Sophie de Saint Phalle

The full story behind the exhibition can be obtained from the information giver board at the landing point. In short, it is the far future and humanity is now an interstellar civilisation. However, it has also faced numerous wars with other civilisations, some of them possibly biological / genetic in nature, so humans have been left weakened and in need of cybernetic enhancement in order to survive, eventually reaching a point where children are conceived in vivo and assigned to full cyborg bodies which define their role in their civilisation.

Within the exhibition, the images represent a group of these human-cyborgs now forced to live bound to a single planet, where limited genetic materials are of ever increasing importance, as does the need for these human constructs to express their humanity. Set within an environment representing the landscape of the planet to which they are confined, the installation comprises two parts: the landing point and events area – the installation opened with 6 hours of music – with the second containing the art itself. when visiting, it is essential you have Advanced Lighting Model enabled (Preferences → Graphics → make sure Advanced Lighting is checked), and preferably use the local environment (World → Environment → make sure Used Shared Environment is checked).

Within the art area, the etchings and lithograph are presented mounted on a series of granite-like blocks. At least two copies of each etching is presented, generally on the same block (or a neighbouring block), with each version of an etching given a different finish. They form expressive and very human aspects of life – people at work, people resting from exhaustion, male and female alike. None of them looks particularly “cyborg-like”; rather, but for the title given each piece, these could be studies of fully flesh-and-blood humans. And it is in this that the power of the art lies: the rich suggestion of largely artificial beings trying to express (or recapture?) their essential humanness through art and carvings; seeking to reconnect with their species heritage and origins. As well as the images, the landscape includes figurines intended to represent the races which may have forced humanity down this evolutionary path, the creatures they have had to tame – and the artificial bodies into which they have been forced based not on will or desire, but as a result of genetic make-up and algorithms about which they had no knowledge even as the life-forming decisions were being made about their futures.

Sophie’s work is always evocative and captivating, and Cyborgs offers a further dimension to her work displayed in Second Life, whether you opt to view the pieces as etchings in their own right or within the framework of the installation’s wider narrative. When visiting, do also consider using the teleport disk to visit the other exhibition spaces Sophie has created within her Subcutan arts region (about which you can read about in my January 2022 review).

SLurl Details

• Cyborgs, Subcutan Art Gallery (Ocean Island, rated Adult)

November 30th, 2022 saw the opening of the latest arts centre within the broader selection of galleries spaces and art walks making up the Corsica South Coasters, a group which includes the NovaOwl Gallery and the South Corsica Art Trail, both of which I’ve written about in these pages, and CK’s Corner.

The new facility is located on a sky platform and is called – appropriately enough – the Cloud Galleries. It has been created by arts patron Owl Dragonash, and offers 10 galleries spaces available for rent use by artists.

For the opening, se were occupied by:

• Elan (Ineffable Mote) – primarily paintings from the physical world at the time of my visit.
• Michiel Bechir – Second Life landscapes.
• Anna Maria (AnnaMaria Lysette) – avatar studies.
• Prins (Skylog) – images from Second Life.
• Suzen JueL (JueL Resistance) – physical world art.
• Pau (Paula Sieberi) –  abstract expressionism.
• KayLy (Kayly Iali) – animal and pet paintings from the physical world.
• Jaminda Moon (Jaminda) – Second Life landscapes.
• Raisa Reimse (RaisaReimse) – Second Life landscapes and images.
• Owl Dragonash – Second Life landscapes.

Set within a garden, the gallery units are all built to the same style, offering split-level display space  indoors, and a small outdoor display / sitting space to the rear.

Unit rentals are set at L$100 a week for 50 LI. CasperLet rent boxes are located at the rear of each studio, should one be available. General enquiries on availability and other requirements for using the gallery units should be passed to Owl Dragonash.

As a part of the broader Corsica South Coasters, Cloud Galleries can form part of a wider visit to locations in the group, and can be enjoyed alongside group music events and activities. Details of the group and everything going on within it can be found on the Corsica South Coasters website.

SLurl Details

• Cloud Galleries (Novatron, rated General)