pics from gallery in second life

Come to my show! All you need is to download the second life application- its free. Spread the word! Once you're in secondlife you can just go here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/dowden/42/59/52/?title=Ars%20Virtua Opening is on thursday at 4pm edt (i'll be the one in the viking hat) but you can see the work any time its up now. more pictures

Opening April 5 @ 1pm SLT thru May 25

Avatars express identity. The life of and choices made in creating ones avatar are processes that are well known and long lived in real life. Fandomania is an exhibit of works by Elena Dorfman from the soon to be released book by Aperture of the same name. The work is represented through portrait photography and provides an interesting window into the world of “cosplay.” “The theater of cosplay has no boundaries, is unpredictable, open-ended. It includes both the fantastic and the mundane, the sexually aberrant and innocent, female characters who become samurai warriors and brainy scientists, and male characters who magically change their sex,” as described by Dorfman.

In contrast to this both through medium and subject we are presenting the lifesized Fur-Suit portrait paintings of Jay Van Buren. These paintings are executed through lengthy ten hour sittings of the subject in a traditional painting studio. Three of these were exhibited at the BRAVO! art space in Rotterdam, a project of the Foundation D.S.P.S.

Ars Virtua finds the contrast of photography and painting interesting especially in the synthetic environment. The discussion of constructed identity is particularly relevent in this new medium and context.

ELENA DORFMAN’s work has appeared in the Village Voice, International Herald Tribune, Art & Auction, and Artweek. Her series, Still Lovers, appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions internationally and is the subject of two monographs. An exhibition of her work at Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, opens on April 5.

http://arsvirtua.com
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Butler/229/16/52
http://aperture.org/fandomania

Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.