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aperture

Last Updated:
Dec 3, 2008

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Gender: Male
Status: Single
Age: 56
City: NEW YORK
State: New York
Country: US

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

FANDOMANIA at the Ars Virtua Gallery
Category: Art and Photography

Please join photographer Elena Dorfman (aka Stanley Dench) in Second Life for a presentation of FANDOMANIA at the Ars Virtua Gallery.

WHEN: April 5 at 4:00 EST (1:00 SLT/ Pacific Time Zone; 9:00 p.m. GMT)
WHERE: Ars Virtua Gallery in Second Life (Dowden & Butler)
WHAT: An exhibition of Fandomania: Characters and Cosplay by Elena Dorfman

The exhibition will feature a selection of Dorfman's recent FANDOMANIA series; a special virtual edition of the book (published in Real Life this spring by Aperture) will be available to everyone who visits the Ars Virtua gallery.

In FANDOMANIA, photographer ELENA DORFMAN examines the phenomenon of "cosplay," in which participants dress up in costumes—and live part of their lives—as characters from video games, animated films, and Japanese graphic novels.

Dorfman puts herself quietly behind the scenes of these fan-based events to create a remarkable collective portrait. As she describes it, "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." Explorations of identity through portraiture are at the forefront of Dorfman's work, with the blurred lines between fantasy and reality a continuing theme. Dorfman allows each individual a spotlight in which to enact their fantasy. The effect is pointedly evocative of this new world of role playing and narrative, one in which scenery is secondary and persona is everything.

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. A Real Life exhibition of Fandomania at Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, opens on April 12.

For more information on Fandomania by Elena Dorfman, visit Aperture's website.

For more information on Ars Virtua, visit http://arsvirtua.com

To visit Ars Virtua simply create a free account in Second Life and run the current client. Once you have this properly installed follow this link -- secondlife://Dowden42/59 -- directly to Ars Virtual or use http://slurl.com/secondlife/dowden/42/59/52/?title=Ars%20Virtua

Special thanks to James Morgan (Rubaiyat Shatner) and Ariel Martian (milki Unknown) for exhibition support.

Hope to see you on Second Life!