As I wrote back in October 2014, Mistero Hifeng is a remarkable artist, straddling the physical and virtual. His sculptures and 2D art are visually stunning, mixing the real with the surreal, and I’ve been and an admirer of his work since first noticing it on a number of regions around SL.

An awardee of a full region under the Linden Endowment for the Arts 8th round of Artists in Residence, Mistero has just opened his exhibit on LEA29 to the public.

Bordered on two sides by tall cliffs and open to the sea on the other two, the region somewhat resembles the half region given over to his gallery and sky store: a watery environment with sandbars and small sandy islands, across which his sculptures are ranged, some of them resized to quite large dimensions, making them both easier to appreciate and also quite intimidating in scale.

For anyone who has seen Mistero’s pieces, some of those will doubtless be familiar: the katana wielding chess pieces of Voltare, the haunting faces and figures of Chiuso nella gabbia di un’eta’, the surreal Quante volte ho detto al cielo io, the unsettling Prendimi L’anima, and so on.

However, there are also some newer pieces here as well, such as Come fosse…niente…, and Per Te, both of which I found particularly striking and evocative. Standing, or should I say gracefully arched, over some of the pieces is the imposing figure of Veglio su di te, while scattered across the water is a series of untitled female figures standing beneath umbrellas.

I will confess that I couldn’t entirely escape a slight feeling that I was visiting a commercial extension to Mistero’s gallery, which I’m sure is not the artist’s intent. However, leaving this niggle aside, there is no denying that the additional room offered by a full region does allow several of the pieces to be impressively resized and displayed, as noted. If you have never seen Mistero’s work before, this is perhaps an ideal way of acquainting yourself with it

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