Art in Second Life 2021 (33) RL Photo Festival 2021

After my visit to “The beauty of moving water” by Nils Urqhart at Kondor gallery (read here) Nils Urqhart invited me to see the RL Photo Festival, which opened it’s doors on March 31st.

It’s the 3rd RL Photo Festival after 2019 with 12 participants and 2020 with 15 participants. The 2021 festival shows the artful pictures and photographs of 18 different artists. Nis Urqhart organized the festival, that takes place in a high-rise building, Helvellyn Gallery, that was provided by Chia (Volchia Ferduccio).

Melinda Yearsley, Sisi Biedermann, CybeleMoon, Nichelle Valois and Bonach Iretons at the RL Photo Festival 2021

On the ground floor, where you land is the dancefloor for the opening party. At one wall you can see a film of the opening party, a board with the participating artists and you can scroll through a book, which presents all 18 artists with a short biography and description of their themes. In the book you also find many links to flickr pages and to galleries of the participating artists. The book is sold for just 50 L$.

Monique Beebe, Orpheus Paxlapis,Fenella Allen and Isabel Soderstrom at the RL Photo Festival 2021

The participants are: Hermes Kondor, CybeleMoon, Viktor Savior, Melinda Yearsley, Fenella Allen, Orpheus Paxlapis, Duna Gant, MonaByte, Arpeggio, Sisi Biedermann, Slatan Dryke, Bonach Ireton, ArtWolf Eternal, Isabel Soderstrom, 4pril, Monique Beebe, Linda Doune and Nichelle Valois.
I saw the work of some of Hermes Kondor, CybeleMoon (Hana Hoobinoo) and Slatan Dryke already in other exhibition. The names of some others sound familiar to me, they had stands at the Chritmas market next to the Art Gallery Rill’Arts (read here). Some others show their work the very first time at the RL Photo Festival.

Arpeggio, Linda Doune, Duna Gant and MonaByte at the RL Photo Festival 2021

The RL Photo Festival provides an overview over many different themes of RL photography: Nature, makro pictures of blossoms and plants, portraits, cities, everyday life scenes, erotic art, black & white photos, animals, gardens, celestial bodies and many more. By the way, the themes are the same for SL photographers. Some photographs are augmented with graphic, others are processed.

4pril, ArtWolf Eternal, Hermes Kondor, Viktor Savior and Slatan Dryke at the RL Photo Festival 2021

To see all the different styles and themes is very enjoyable and you could spend easily many hours at the RL Photo Festival. I didn’t count the photographs but there might be around 200 – hence quite a some to see.
Thank you Nils for the organisation, thank you Chia for providing the space and many thanks to all others who were involved to make this festival come alive. Thanks of course to all participating artists for their work.
The RL Photo Festival will close its doors on April 25th.

Landmark to Helvellyn Gallery and the RL Photo Festival 2021
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Helvellyn/71/233/31

Art in Second Life 2020 (28) La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020

Wednesday, May 20th, Aneli Abeyante opened a new joined exhibtion of 7 artists: Sophie Maire Sinclair (Perpetua1010), Slatan Dryke, Desy Magic, ilyra Chardin, Sweet Susanowa, Djehuti-Anpu (Thoth Jantzen) and Nok Kirax.
With this new exhibition Aneli also changed (once again) the concept of her gallery “La Maison d’Aneli“. The main hall is now on the ground level in a large industrial or storage hall. From here doors with teleporting functionality lead to skyboxes, one box (50x50x30 meter) for each artist with an allowance of 300 prims. This way the artists are quite free how they showcast their work and there’s no destraction from others rooms or art. I admit, that I like this concept a lot.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020 – the new gallery concept, you start your visit in a large industrial and enter skyboxes by teleporter doors

I visited the new joined exhibtion several times before the opening event which I couldn’t attend due to my other activities in Second Life. My visit started with ilyra Chardin’s box where she installed a little Mediterrean town under the current restrictions. She titeled her installation with “The New Normal – The Date”.
The setting is quite lovely, I could almost smell the sea and the Mediterrean air and flair. But no tourists on the streets and no inhabitants. You have to look up to the windows and balconies and even there are not many. I saw one man playing a banjo and singing and I also saw “The Date”, two people sitting at dinner on two adjacent balconies.
ilyra Chardin is an artist and designer, whose work has been featured in numerous installations and exhibits across the grid. Her art work crosses media and styles, spanning from real life and digital to SL art.  First and foremost, Ilyra is a story teller.” (taken from the accompanying notecard)

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: ilyra Chardin – “The New Normal – The Date”

Nok Kirax is in Second Life since 2007 and has dome a lot of different things in SL for example building and landscaping. His current passion is photography. He mainls makes portraits with a non coloured background (black or white) which forces the viewer to focus on the face. The portraits are quite expressive and the eyes and every wrinkles tell a story. You begin to think about the person behind the face, what is the story, which fear do they have, which passion?

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Nok Kirax

Sophie Marie Sinclair (Perpetua1010)’s box at La Maison d’Aneli is a mixture between a showcase for her pictures, her art and a mystic, hazy fantasy place. Set to “midnight” the pictures illuminate the scene and it needs a second view to realize that the pictures depict human bodies, mostly female bodies and all colours of different yellow tones. The pictures develop a totally different impression in this environment than just seen on a black or white screen.
Sophie Marie Sinclair is a RL painter, cartoonist, book author and ghostwriter for well known comedians.. She mainly paints nude from models and abstract art. She loves to experiment with different kind of paint and lithography. She has made several book illustrations and was for many years political cartoonist for a well known satire magazine. She lived and worked in the Unites States, Australia, Rome and Monaco.” (taken mostly from the accompanying notecard)
Sophie Marie Sinclair (Perpetua1010) has her own gallery the “SUBCUTAN Art Gallery and Multimedia Centre“, which I visited recently. The blogpost about that visit is up to be published in a few days.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Sophie Marie Sinclair (Perpetua1010)

doyouSL builder/artist Thoth Jantzen (aka “TJ”, “Djehuti-Anpu”) specializes in creating massively immersive multi-media environments and sculpture.  Using video as “paint”, he creates builds with structures that allow the media to “paint” itself on them in interesting, often beautiful ways, with changing patterns emerging as a result as the video plays out over time. His work’s been displayed at numerous SL events and galleries, and some in RL as well.” (taken from the accompanying notecard)
The see Thoth’s installation at La Maison d’Aneli you should make sure to set your viewer to the proposed settings. You sit down in one of the colourful pods and you screen is filled with permanent changing forms and colours. You hear psychadelic music and (at least I) felt like being on a drug trip. Most probably because I never was on any drug trip, that is how I think it would be. Your mind begins to wander as you follow how the forms and colours develop on your screen and you get calm and relexed drifting into another world. A very well made show, that did impress me. Unfortunately a picture can just grab a still from a moment and you can’t see the motion, on the other hand every moment captured is kind of art itself.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Thoth Jantzen

I saw Sweet Susanowa’s art the first time at another exhibition at La Maison d’Aneli back in July 2019. Sweet joined Second Life 12 years ago without thinking about any exhibition at a gallery. She is a photographer now in real life as well as in Second Life. At La Maison d’Aneli different examples of her work are displayed ranging from processed and artificially manipulated black and white portrait pictures, erotic art to coloured abstract art. Some of her picture look like snapshots, even double exposured and hazy and this impressions is enhanced by round corners. They capture the person supposedly unnoticed, a glimpse of everyday life and some are very erotic in my personal view.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Sweet Susanowa

Desy Magic is in Second Life for almost 12 years. She is a passionate photographer and she has a unique and colourful style in which she processes her pictures and makes them real eye catchers. You can still see the original motif yet the abstract forms or objects added to her picture are a dominant element, intriguing.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Desy Magic

Slatan Dryke is in Second Life since 2007. “In RL Slatan loves Art in every expression, but he is most fond of paintings and sculptures, following his classical education. Slatan is also a photographer in RL. In Second Life he’s a a perfectionist in taking his pictures, never missing a single detail. Slatan rarely uses an editor to modify his pictures, so he likes to say his works are “natural”. He also creates sculptures, which are often slight but become alive with a creative use of textures, lights and movements.” (excerpt taken from the accompanying notecard)
At La Maison d’Aneli he showcases a colourful installation in his box. The walls, the floor and the ceiling are textured in red, brown and blue tones. In the center you see round animated spirals made of faces, worms, mice and skeletons and on top of the spirals are two large bottled paperships. Furtheron there are some abstract tree-like textured objects in the room, The combination of the art objects is hard to Interpret, at least for me, yet the single objects are intriguing.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Slatan Dryke

The current exhibition stays opened at least until June 20th.
La Maison d’Aneli is owned by Aneli Abeyante. Through her gallery she brings together all forms of creativity in RL and SL and the featured artists come from around the globe. Aneli’s intention is to “put her gallery in the service of artists, so that the world can be better, exchanges and meetings probably contribute even though it seems to be particles.
Thank you for another great joined exhibtion, Aneli. As always I enjoyed my visit and writing about it. It always inspires me.

Landmark to La Maison d’Aneli (new, it’s on the ground level!)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Holland/23/65/23
Landmark to Sophie Marie Sinclair (Perpetua1010)’s “SUBCUTAN Art Gallery and Multimedia Centre”
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ocean%20Island/136/128/1002