KRESS – After having displayed their art at various places in Second Life since 2005, Nebulosus Severine and Arahan Claveau have finally found a home with their new gallery: Arthole. The gallery will be devoted to art that’s unique for SL, and opened Saturday.

”There’ll be no photo exhibitions here,” Claveau said. ”I don’t see pictures from SL as art in any way. No matter how complex they are, to me they are still just snapshots.”

Arthole will feature installations: Three-dimensional and interactive art. ”Everything will be unique for SL. I’m a painter and photographer in RL, but my pictures will be presented in a different way in here,” Claveau said.

What he loves about SL is the possibility to do virtually everything.

”If you want to do something, you can do it if you have the talent and desire. If you don’t do it, it’s just laziness. SL photos are an easy way to get attention. I’m very opposed to selling photos in SL. I’ve never done it, and it makes me angry. It costs you 10L$ to upload it, so it’s cynical selling it for 1000L$. But if people are silly enough to buy it … I know people that sell their pictures. I don’t hate them, but I’m not impressed either,” he said.

On his Flickr pages, Claveau once made a story without words consisting of 52 pictures. ”People told me to make an in-world story book of it, but why would I do that? Anyone can steal it on Flickr if they want to.”

In January, he announced that he would no more upload pictures from SL. ”I want to concentrate on art that’s more substantial for me,” Claveau said.

Arthole will hold a permanent collection of his and Severin’s older works on the ground floor, and update with new exhibitions every third month on the first floor. The second floor is reserved for guest artists.

At the starting point, you’ll find yourself in a gym, surrounded by lockers. Walk either to the left or the right into one of them, and you walk into an installation by Severine or Claveau. The lockers are filled with pictures, posters, drawings, pages from their diaries – all sorts of things that have been an inspiration for them in their formative years, and