ZEN SEKAI GALLERY
About
About
About
Zen Sekai Gallery is an online exhibition space created by William E. Elston and Suzumebachi Design. Exhibitions are by invitation only, we do not review unsolicited work.Exhibitions revolve and change over the course of time. Sign up for our low-volume newsletter if you want to be informed of new and changing shows.
Our 3D gallery walkthroughs are powered by Kunstmatrix. They are virtual spaces where images of real paintings in virtual frames can be viewed as if in a real exhibition. Paintings may be for sale. Paintings that have already sold are indicated by the traditional red dot. Prices do not include applicable taxes, crating, shipping or handling.
History
History
In the early days of the World Wide Web many websurfers began their journeys at the NCSA Mosaic homepage.Mosaic was an early graphical web browser being developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Netscape was a commercial spinoff from that effort.
I'd long been interested in both presenting paintings online, and in virtual gallery experiences. My very first attempt at an online exhibition was listed on the NSCA Mosaic home page in the early 1990s. Mosaic's homepage was a changing compendium of what was then happening on the Web.
Fast forward to 2010. I had been playing a game online called Yoville. Yoville was a small virtual town with a virtual economy, and the ability to communicate in realtime with other players via avatars that you would dress, coif and deploy. You could chat with these other players, meet new ones, even give them gifts or barter for possessions. You could also accumulate properties. Your first was acquired simply by joining the game, and consisted of an apartment in a ritzy high-rise.
My second property was an old abandoned police station. I eventually acquired a haunted house, a trailer, a yacht, a flying saucer, an expensive condo, a Japanese home, a castle and a home made out of a pumpkin, all purchased with YoCash or YoCoin.
I decided to turn my Yoville apartment into a gallery. One of the items you could purchase on the Yoville market was a picture frame that you could upload your own image to. I purchased a stack of those. My Yoville gallery had three showrooms, a storage and prep room, an office and a bathroom. We invited other Yo players to our openings, which were packed with avatars.
Fast forward to 2010. I had been playing a game online called Yoville. Yoville was a small virtual town with a virtual economy, and the ability to communicate in realtime with other players via avatars that you would dress, coif and deploy. You could chat with these other players, meet new ones, even give them gifts or barter for possessions. You could also accumulate properties. Your first was acquired simply by joining the game, and consisted of an apartment in a ritzy high-rise.
My second property was an old abandoned police station. I eventually acquired a haunted house, a trailer, a yacht, a flying saucer, an expensive condo, a Japanese home, a castle and a home made out of a pumpkin, all purchased with YoCash or YoCoin.
I decided to turn my Yoville apartment into a gallery. One of the items you could purchase on the Yoville market was a picture frame that you could upload your own image to. I purchased a stack of those. My Yoville gallery had three showrooms, a storage and prep room, an office and a bathroom. We invited other Yo players to our openings, which were packed with avatars.
In the spring of 2021 I began talking with friends William Dubin and John Laney about the possibility of creating a 3D virtual walkthrough gallery experience. Brick and mortar galleries were already doing this using Google Street View and the Matterform platform, but these required a real-world gallery as a starting point. I began researching and discovered the Kunstmatrix platform, a suite of online tools designed for artists, galleries and museums. Within a matter of days I had cobbled together a basic website, and the first two exhibitions; one of my own work, and one for William Dubin's watercolors.
Our third exhibition, WHAT IS FOUND THERE, features the work of 8 Contemporary Realists. It also is the first time that we've attempted to promote the exhibition with an opening reception using the Zoom meetings app. This has been an evolving experiment, and I'm excited to see what the future might bring. I hope that you will continue this journey with us.
Our third exhibition, WHAT IS FOUND THERE, features the work of 8 Contemporary Realists. It also is the first time that we've attempted to promote the exhibition with an opening reception using the Zoom meetings app. This has been an evolving experiment, and I'm excited to see what the future might bring. I hope that you will continue this journey with us.
Sales
Sales
Zen Sekai Gallery does not handle sales directly. Instead inquiries are passed on directly to the artist. Zen Sekai Gallery does not earn a commission on sales.If you are interested in seeing how the work looks in your home or office, we can demonstrate that remotely using the Kunstmatrix Art.Augmented app. You download the app for free to your iOS or Android device, and we make the image available to you. By holding your iPad, Kindle, iPhone or Android phone up to the intended wall, you can view the painting superimposed in 3D.
Prices listed on works for sale do not include handling, crating, shipping, framing or applicable sales tax. All of these matters are at the discretion of the artist.
Zen Sekai Gallery is an experimental platform, and may in the future handle sales directly. However, that has not yet been determined.
Copyright
Copyright
All works are copyright ©2022 by their respective artists, with all rights reserved. These works cannot be copied or reproduced without the explicit permission of their respective artists, aside from that which is generally required to view works on a computer or other Internet capable device.The design of this website is also copyright ©2022 by Zen Sekai Gallery and Suzumebachi Design.
Donate
DONATE
If you would like to support our efforts to present high quality artwork to a broad Internet audience, please consider a donation. Any amount will be appreciated.
paypal
venmo
You can donate by scanning the PayPal qr-code with your smartphone. You can also click on the qr-code to engage my PayPal.me link. All donations are appreciated.
You can donate by scanning the Venmo qr-code. You can also find me on Venmo as William Elston or username @jacquesboot . All donations are appreciated.
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