Experiencing Returned

How we feel about art or artistic experiences is something deeply personal and is sometimes difficult to explain. I am not at all an art connoisseur, one who understands the details, technique, or principles of an art and neither am I competent to judge it, other than on my very own personal behalf. However, I know if I like it or if I don´t, if it talks to me in my present mood or if it leaves completely numb and unmoved. 

My esteem of the art may vary to some degree with my own personal circumstances, with the music played or sometimes even with my thoughts before going to the exhibition.

I met with the gallery owner, my friend, Kandinsky Beaumont and my buddy Apmel Goosson at the entrance to the gallery. We exchanged a few niceties but then I wanted to go inside, so I walked away from them into the gallery.

My first sight was baffling, there was art on every wall, all the floor and in the ceiling also.

Everything was covered with Returned´s art, and when I walked into the gallery the music hit me also, a strange primordial thumping with a calming effect. I started feeling a thrill deep down inside and knew I was going to have a good time.

The first thing that caught my eyes immediately after that was a group of avatars consisting of the artist Returned himself and "his family" on display, their bodies naked and their positions frozen in time. The woman has her head in her hands and is obviously weeping.

Although I had taken more pictures at this event than on an other I have been to in SecondLife (more than 50) when I started writing this post I decided that I would include only a few of the artwork here, just enough so that you might also get interested and go there to see it and experience it all.

At an exhibition it is all about oneself and the art work, I don´t worry about what the artist may and may not want me to think. I found the exhibition extremely touching and with a childlike quality that moved me. It was a childish egomaniac with a very fragmented view of himself and his experiences in life and with his relatives, alone with his own actions, reactions, thoughts and feelings. He sees no connections, it´s all random for him and inscrutable. He also shows a very childlike honesty and has no defenses, what you see is what you get. There is beauty in his ugliness, in his huge eyes, and long limbs with enormous hands and feet. No pretense , no airs, no disguise or clothes, he lays it all bare for the on-looker and asks only for kindness.

Towards the end, the artist and "his family" joined us on and danced, surrounded bu the rest of the artwork everywhere.

A big part of the glitterati of the SecondLife art establishment was there, among them the infamous SaveMe Oh. I enjoy trying to tease her a lot but the woman gives and takes abuse with the same humor. It is quite impossible not to respect someone who can do that.

Lastly I show you a picture of Millimina Salamander and myself dancing. The naughty woman had put on a soccer top to tease me, but she looked lovely so I did not care.

I left the opening happy and grateful for the experience when a few of the other artists started doing their own thing, probably with the acceptance of Returned and Kandinsky but it irritated me and spoiled some of the experience for me. I wonder what they themselves would have felt if another artist had started doing his thing at their opening. 

It is most likely something they usually do because no one else seemed to mind, I guess I was just feeling overprotective of Returned.

Your personal shoal of walruses to escort you to the gallery Solace Island: Place des Petits Bourgeois (SLurl)