Tag: Nitroglobus

Now open at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, curated by Dido Haas, is an engaging exhibition of 2D and 3D art by JadeYu Fhang. This doesn’t actually say a lot, because the fact is, JadeYu never fails to engage the grey matter with her art; her work is constantly evocative and provocative, brining forth a narrative with which to draw her audience in.

However, this exhibition comes with a slight difference in terms of a deliberate haziness of intent on the part of the artist, a haziness intended to further engage the observer’s eyes and minds.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: JadeYu Flang – Sans TitreThis haziness starts with the exhibit’s title: Sans Titre (“Untitled”, or if you prefer, “Without Title”), which as JadeYu notes, is an intentional step so as not to sway visitors with preconceptions ahead of arriving at the gallery and witnessing the work first hand. This haziness then continues through the works themselves, the intention being to leaving interpretation of at least the 2D elements to the eyes and thoughts of the beholder.

Which is not to say there is not a central theme running through this exhibition, or that it is  in any way random in content or execution. Rather the reverse: the theme is made clear; however, the artist’s intent it more about using the theme as a basic framework with which to allow us to view the works and generate our own understandings of the drawings presented, rather than have the images serve to underscore the theme itself.

This actually brings me to an awkward crux: how best to offer insight into Sans Titre without impinging my own (and ultimately subjective) description of that theme, and thus colouring your reaction to the images and 3D sculptures? As such, this review is a little more circumspect than my usual offerings relating to exhibitions at Nitroglobus, as I’d rather try to keep JadeYu’s desire to provide a framework of theme, rather than direct people to specifics – so I’ll minimise things by quoting her own words:

Let’s call it a matter of violence inside bodies, facial expressions (3D) leading to the intention of erasing the other person, as suggested in the images (2D). The papers around the women? These papers indicate words, insults and other ignominy which are thrown in women’s faces throughout their lifes. Words loaded with hatred and violence “the killing words”. Nothing is written on the papers… it’s up to you to imagine what could be there.

Why women?

They are like the symbol, the mirror of those who through a brutality, a destructive will seek to destroy. To destroy everything that in no way corresponds to fluidity and natural roundness. Flexibility and openness is not the order of the day, the preference is for the square shape and it must be respected, locking up any will to exist outside the frame.

–  JadeYu Flang

With those words to guide you, I’m go to say anything else, other than to say that – again as is usual with JadeYu’s work – San Titre is stunningly visual in both the 2D and 3D art presented. Instead, I’ll leave you to pay a visit and both witness and cogitate JadeYu’s work and the realities it explores, for yourself.

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• Nitroglobus Roof Gallery (Sunshine Homestead, rated: Moderate)

I first encountered Yann Gyro’s (sempiternel) work during what was to become the last set of exhibition at La Maison d’Aneli in December 2022, when he presented an untitled but engaging 3D installation (see: Five at La Maison d’Aneli in Second Life). I was not the only one taken by that installation, as Dido Haas also saw it as well and asked Yann to consider exhibiting at her Nitroglobus Roof Gallery – and he accepted. So, officially opening on Monday, March 6th, 2023, we have Transcend Struggle, a combined 2D and 3D installation created by Yann.

This is a highly personal installation for Yann, focusing as it does on his mother’s diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, and his love for her and his wish to support her through her diagnosis and subsequent treatment – and most of all to her memory and her strength.

For those who might not be familiar with the term, metastatic breast cancer is a stage VI cancer where the cancer cells have spread beyond the axillary lymph nodes to distant sites, including the bones, the brain, the liver and the  pulmonary pleurae. it can occur several years after a primary breast cancer has been identified and treated (or at the same time the primary cancer is identified) and is the final stage of breast cancer; while treatment is possible, there is no cure. Treatments can take many forms, some of which can be as debilitating as the disease itself (e.g. radiation and chemotherapy).

Given the above, it should come as no surprise that the images and 3D elements of Transcend Struggle are powerful in message; metaphor is not required (although it is powerfully present in one sculpture and one of the images). Supported by a poem by Yann, the pictures and sculptures speak eloquently and fully to his love for his mother, her strength, and what is means to live within the twin shadows of a terminal cancer and its treatment regimes – shadows which fall across both the person afflicted and those around them.

As someone who has both lost her mother to cancer and has herself faced breast cancer (mine was fortunately a benign DCIS, and as of May 2023 I am 5 years “clear” of the disease following surgery and treatment), I found Transcend Struggle deeply moving. However, you do not have to have gone through diagnosis and treatment – or know someone who has – to appreciate the outflow of love found within the installation; it in clear both within Yann’s words and the beauty of his images, while his sculptures convey an equally strong message. As such, it is difficult to write about it; Transcend Struggle very genuinely needs to be visited, and Yann’s the images, sculptures, words experienced first-hand.

Cancer loves to hide in the darkness of fear and silence where it can prey on the mind as much as it does on the body, gnawing equally on those diagnosed with it and those around them; confronting it – be it through seeking a diagnosis, through treatment or just by talking about it – may not always lessen its threat, but it does shine a light on it  and allow strength and love to be shared as it is faced. Transcend Struggle speaks eloquently to this fact.

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• Nitroglobus Roof Gallery (Sunshine Homestead, rated: Moderate)

For February 2023, Dido Haas presents Sole Fragments, a themed exhibition of monochrome photography by Maghda, at her Nitroglobus Roof Gallery.

Like Dido, I first encountered Maghda’s work some 8 years ago, but in my case, it was at another shared exhibition hosted at the now-closed DaphneArts Gallery. Also like Dido, I also lost track of Maghda, and had no idea that she had departed Second Life for a time, and only returned in-world in 2022.

With a focus on avatar studies, often featuring herself as the model and often presented in greyscale or monochrome, Maghda has a talent for pieces that offer single-frame stories, often with an element of introspection or personal discovery.

This is very much the case with Sole Fragments, a title which can be taken both literally – these are pieces offered from a sole perspective – and as something of a double play on words: the images represent a journey – a walk, if you will – through her Second Life and times; and walks are things we undertake on the soles of our feet. At the same time these images are reflections of Maghda’s soul.

As Maghda herself notes, this is a collection depicting the highs and lows and triumphs and struggles endured; moments of growth and of emotional release. Each image is deeply candid, deeply atmospheric and powerfully resonant – made all the more so through the use of monochrome and greyscale.

Each of the twelve images in the collection is a step on Maghda’s journey, allowing us to share in moments of love, loss, escape, freedom, and self-expression. The order in which we follow the steps in this journey is unimportant; it is the time we take to experience each, both in terms of the story it presents across the entire canvas and the emotional self-expression by the artist – and in allowing that expression and story resonate within us.

Given theses pieces are offered by the artist as a means of connecting within the emotions they contain and as a window into into her soul, it is really not my place to overlay them or the exhibition with my own subjective interpretations of specific images. What I will say is that this is a softly powerful collection of images, and I have no hesitation in recommending it as a must-see exhibition.

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• Nitroglobus Roof Gallery (Sunshine Homestead, rated: Moderate)

Since co-launching the original Nitroglobus Gallery and, over the last several years, Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, photographer-artist Dido Haas has established a well-deserved reputation for curating one of Second Life’s most engaging galleries for art in Second Life. Month on month she brings out the very best in the artists she invites to exhibit within the gallery’s halls, resulting in perhaps the most consistently enthralling series of art displays each and every year, hence why I attempt to cover the gallery as fully as possible through the year.

However, there is a drawback to all of this: such is the amount of work involved in managing and curating the gallery, Dido’s skills as a photographer-artist rarely get to be seen in-world, and this is a shame, as her work is the equal of any of those she invites to exhibit at the gallery. Hence why, when she drops a note about presenting a (possibly short-term) exhibition of her work in the Nitroglobus Roof Gallery Annex, I’m scooting across to take a look.

Nudospective, as the name implies, is something of a “retrospective” in a much as it comprises a set of images Dido has produced over time. It is also, again as suggested by the title, utilises nudity as a linking theme. As such, this is an exhibition that might best be considered NSFW when viewing.

My love of Dido’s photography lies in several elements. First, she tends to work predominantly in black-and-white or greyscale or with a monochrome lean. Secondly, she specialises in avatar studies and thirdly – and most importantly – she has the ability to communicate so much through her work simply through the use of angle, pose, and focus rather than relaying on excessive props or post-processing.

This is very much in evidence within Nudospective; mostly presented in greyscale, these are pieces which – although utilising nudity – are not in any way directly sexual or voyeuristic. Rather, they are elegant narratives on the beauty of the female form as visualised through the medium of a virtual avatar, some of which offer what might be considered a subtle commentary on the subtleties of beauty compared to the expectations of beauty.

Take, for example, Legs. It features what is all too frequently a tool of heightened (literally and metaphorically) sexualised beauty: the high heel. But is it the heels that give the legs image their inherent form and beauty, or is it their muscle tone, angle and placement – all of which could be present sans the heels? Similarly, in Freckles alongside of it, is it really the firmness and curve of a breast – again so often seen as an expression of sexuality – really as worthy of our attention as a mark of beauty as much as the simple patina of freckles over the flesh of an upper arm and shoulder?

Across the hall, and a little conversely, Belly Piercing comes from another direction entirely. Within it sits a duality of innocence pointing towards a certain sexuality. On the one hand, it offers a natural statement on the beauty of a body piercing, whilst on the other the ball of the pearl, sitting on the cusp of the navel and the play of shadow within it offers a suggestion of focal point of female sexual pleasure.

Beautiful executed individually, taken collectively, Nudospective forms an engaging, easy-to-appreciate exhibition of photography which potentially has a lot to say.

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• Nitroglobus Roof Gallery Annex (Sunshine Homestead, Rated Moderate)

The law of polarity (aka the law of opposites) states the idea that everything has an opposite: with every day, there is a night; for every moment of sadness there will come a corresponding one of joy; for every electron there is a positron; every life ends in death, and so on. It’s a notion akin to Chinese yin and yang; and like that philosophical concept, it suggests that these opposites, if not directly joined, are interconnected at some level.

It is this interconnectedness – this duality, if you will – that is the focus of the December exhibition now open at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, curated by Dido Haas. And like many exhibitions there, it is an exhibition that is layered in potential interpretation.

Entitled Junction Points, it as presented by Selen Minotaur, and features both 2D and 3D pieces (together with a machinima), and in describing it, Selen focuses on the idea of duality inherent in the law of polarity, and the importance of finding balance:

We live, in fact, in duality: high-low, left-right, chiaroscuro, good-bad, day-night, healthy-sick, cold-hot, north-south, etc. Duality teaches us what we prefer to experience and helps us recognise how to change our way of thinking to create that preferred experience in our lives. We know we prefer happiness because we have known sorrow. We love health because we have known sickness.

The challenge, for everyone, is therefore to find the points of junction, those which make it possible to feel “ONE”, in symbiosis and in balance with oneself, with the others and with the universe.

– Selen Minotaur

In reflection of this, the images and sculpture forming the exhibition offer elements of duality throughout, together with their inherent points of connection. In doing so, she presents pieces that are both highly visual whilst frequently offering insight and commentary on life and the human condition.

Take 1+1=3 for example. It suggests two people caught in a dance or coming together in greeting / celebration, and about to clasp hands. Between them is a third individual placed in a front split, feet touching both of the standing figures. Set on a backdrop of geometric forms, it is a piece visual rich in ideas of duality, reflection, and connection. More deeply, however, it might be said to reflect the basic truth that the singularity of life (symbolised by the middle figure connecting the two upright figures, complete with hair growing into a tree-like form – the tree being itself a symbol of life) is born out of the duality of two people becoming a unity.

Across the hall, Double Sided offers a a commentary on our need to at times being both striking in our looks and gaining the attention of others and for our need to to be private, as symbolised by the use of shaded glasses and the hat in one  half of the image. Thus, on a deeper level it offers a metaphor for the fact that we are, by turns, both social and gregarious creatures whilst also creatures of needing solitude and privacy, and somewhere between the two is that junction point of nature where me might be most true to ourselves.

Within the 3D pieces, both Mood Swing and Depth are especially layered in interpretation, offering ideas on the manner in which we need to find balance within the see-sawing of our emotions both for our onw piece of mind and our relationships to others; through our perceptions of self and those around us, and the fact that we can seem at time to be incredibly deep and at other extraordinarily shallow, with the junction between the two being whom we really are.

Visually expressive, rich in context and (again) supported by lighting and elements by Adwehe on behalf of Dido and the Gallery, Junction Points is an exhibition well worth spending time pondering. However, when visiting, do make sure you have Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled in your viewer (Preferences → Graphics → make sure Advanced Lighting Model is checked; no need to have Shadows enabled as well) in order to see all of the pieces in the installation correctly.

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• Nitroglobus Roof Gallery (Sunshine Homestead, rated: Moderate)