Gracie Kendel's "Ce n’est pas une peinture"

Gracie Kendel, the artist known for her "1000 Avatar Project" has come up with another art exhibition. The name of it is "Ce n’est pas une peinture," which translates to "This is not a painting."

In her article in iRez, Gracie mentioned that some art critics in Second Life feel two dimensional art on the Grid is too plain, "They don't believe people should upload photos of their physical art … they believe that people should use Second Life as its own platform. While I don't agree with this line of thinking, I did decide to play with the concept." So she came up with the idea "to deconstruct one of my paintings/collages into a full sim installation that avatars can walk and fly through and get lost in. … I want to expand on the idea of blowing apart a painting to evaluate and experience each layer separately as a whole."

In her blog, Gracie described herself as creating the place "using chance and spontaneity" while listening to a music stream playing jazz and classical music. The iRez article described herself as  having taken five days off her job, and doing little but work on the project, "Right now I am almost in a trance-like work state." Ziki Questi gave the number of prims as 1400

Getting to the location at the LEA 15 sim, I was invited to click on a glowing ball titled "Float." Doing so, I was transported to the middle of the artwork, slowly floating  and tumbling along in the middle of the sea of splashes of colors. It was … different.

"Ce n’est pas une peinture" was the scene of Gracie's sixth rezzday party, on Monday October 1st. At 7PM, a number of avatars dropped down to the bottom of the sim to wish the birthday girl well. Gracie herself was in an avatar skin that resembled the splashes of colors of her new project. Gwen Carillon provided the music for the party. A variety of people showed up, from fellow artist Bryn Oh, to someone from Virtual Ability Island, to a couple combateers from a Second Life combat sim army, "WOW, Bryn, great look." "Happy Rez Day Gracie!!!!! we love you!" "How's Gracie gonna test poseballs here?" "It's Gracie....she'll find a way."

Eventually, everyone had to go is and her separate ways. But the painting you can float around in will be around for a while at LEA 15 (63, 114, 533).

Sources: iRez, Ziki Questi, Gracie Kendel


*Update* A Youtube was made of the exhibit by Nina Camplin, which can be seen Here.

Bixyl Shuftan