After my visits of “American Shot” by Milena Carbone at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery (read part I here and part II here) I got in contact to Milena Carbone (mylena1992). She invited me to see her gallery “The Carbone Gallery” and invited me to her gallery group.
Actually Milena has not just one own gallery, she also has an affiliate at Noir’Wen City, the city that develops more and more to a colony of artists. I visited The Carbone Gallery at Noir’Wen City first and published my review about it about a week ago (read here).
I visited Milena’s main gallery, The Carbone Gallery, on January 25th after it had just been refurbished. The landing is in a large skybox without any roof. Here you find at one wall Milena’s biography and opposed to it a wall with group gifts. Milena adds one group gift (one picture) per month: “They are unique pictures, created from exhibtion work and researches. They arise from my heart, and are made with love.”
At a third wall you find an overview about Milena’s current exhibtions and projects at other places in Second Life, her current exhibtions at The Carbone Gallery at Noir’Wen City and her current exhitbions at The Carbone Gallery. At the time of my visit there were two exhibtions: “Twins” by Milena Carbone and “The privilege af aging” by Harbor Galaxy.
I visited “Twins” first. Twins is a series of eight pictures composed with four models and two pictures per model. Twins have always been the subject of many myths, artists and symbolic representations. The exhibtion “Twins” expresses four mythical aspects of twinship. These aspects are:
– The Opposite: One turns her head to the past, the other to the future. Twins try to do exactly the opposite of their twin.
– Replication: What will make twins happy are the tiny differences
– Identity: The seek identity for themselves, their rivalry occupies their whole mind
– The Fusion: There’s always their love for eachother
Melina wrote texts about these mythical aspects. These texts accompany the pictures and with this backgrounds the pictures develop even more strength. I spent quite a while at “Twins”.
“Twins” by Milena Carbone at The Carbone Gallery
Milena Carbone (mylena1992) is a French artist and is in Second Life since mid 2019. She discovered its artistic potential and since then has devoted all her free time to creation, associating, as in real life, images and texts: “Milena Carbone is a fiction in which, as in any artistic work, biographical and imaginary elements are mixed.” Her creative process is iterative: some of her images inspire her stories and these stories modify the development of the image, which itself transforms the story. Milena is a story teller with pictures and words. Find about more about Milena at the wall with her biography.
“The privilege af aging” is an exhibtion of pictures by Harbor Galaxy. It is a meditation of aging. Habor Galaxy says: “I’ve been playing with my older avatar for quite a few years now. She is a contrast to the illusion of perfection that we see so frequently in Second Life and to be honest she is a mirror to who I am at this stage of my life.”
Milena created the set-up and how the pictures are showcased. Each picture is presented in a seperate box. If you like you can sit in front of the box, are just look into the box and zoom in. The pictures themselves are quite small. And yes, you will rarely see avatars in Second Life (or in any other virtual environment) that are old. As opposed to, we tend to make our avatars yound and beautiful. As a result, pictures of avatars who look old are quite rare. I have seen quite a lot pictures of older people in RL where the faces tell a story, are intriguing and of a particular beauty. Why are the pictures that small? I have a simple answer to that myself. Older people don’t like pictures of themselves that show all details and every wrinkle. From that point of you, it fits that the pictures are small.
“The privilege af aging” by Harbor Galaxy at The Carbone Gallery
I just recently reported about “Figure and Form” by Harbor Galaxy at DixMix Gallery (read here). Harbor is in Second Life for 12 years. She has a flickr page where I found a short description about her: “Just a pixel dolly exploring my creative side in SL. I don’t generally talk too much about my process primarily because it frequently seems kind of like a happy accident but in my work, I attempt to merge photography and digital painting. I take pictures using screen shots and then edit and manipulate the images in GIMP; frequently using distortion and color to invoke an emotional response from viewer.“
I enjoyed my visit to The Carbone Gallery and I’m pretty sure that it won’t be my last visit and that I will see a lot more of Milena Carbone’s art in the nearer future. Thank you, Milena.
Landmark to The Carbone Gallery
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Woiler/172/158/3316
Landmark to The Carbone Gallery @ Noir’Wen City
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Noir%20Wen/243/203/32
Milena Carbone’s Flickr page
https://www.flickr.com/photos/milenacarbone/
Milena Carbone’s writing (blog)
https://medium.com/@539568
Harbor Galaxy Flickr page
https://www.flickr.com/people/harborgalaxy/
Diomita Maurer’s Blog 