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Erotic sculptures and the divine with Duddley Diaz and Agnes ArellanoCombining the sensual literature of the old world with the celestial understanding of the erotic temples of Khajuraho in Northern India - Galleria Duemila presents Agnes Arellano and Duddley Diaz on an exhibition entitled, “Body and Soul”. The exhibition by the two prominent Filipino sculptors will take place at Galleria Duemila from June 6 – July 20, 2010. With the unanimity of the spiritual and the erotic, the works of Agnes Arellano and Duddley Diaz puts us in a quasi sacred state, a kind of ecclesiastical beauty reminding us how the schools of thought from the west, and ancient religions from the east honoured eros and regarded it as a vehicle to the divine. ARTIST STATEMENT: AGNES ARELLANO “The gods are neither lewd nor prudish. Such notions are human.” – R. Rai/L. Frederik, Khajuraho” “My new work consists of low and high reliefs modeled in clay and cast as wallpieces. The series of erotic and erotological sketches is the visual component of field research done on a pilgrimage to the holy erotic temples in the village of Khajuraho in northern India in 2008. Khajuraho was once a religious capital, the holy city of the rajahs of the Chandella dynasty, whose rulers descended from a mythical sage who was “born of the moon”. Built around the 10th century, there are more than a dozen temples whose exteriors are embellished with erotic imagery, remains of an ancient religion that believes in sex as a vehicle to the Divine. Like Lotus from the mud, the wet tactile medium of earthen clay brought my chosen images to life, decontextualizing them into the Now and Here. Being an ardent student of the tantras and longtime lover of the human form, I was in bliss as I recreated some inspiring scenes, zooming into particular details in extreme close-up and syncretizing these through the church windows of my catholic girlhood. Once in a while it’s good to reexamine our attitude to sexuality. Why so much confusion and fear? Beyond the bliss, there is a stong message, which I cannot say as eloquently as Alan Watts did in the 70’s: ‘We are dangerously insane and making ready to commit global suicide because we have separated the spiritual from the sexual, and the conceptual from the real. Obviously, only those who belive that the world of spirit is more real thant the world of life, biology nand sex will gamble on detonating the atomic bomb’ ” - Agnes Arellano, 2010
DUDDLEY DIAZ “When I started doing these new series of sculptures for the upcoming exhibition on eroticism, my thoughts wanted to go as far back in time as possible to trace the history of erotic literature in the old world. I have lived most of my adult years in Italy and happen to have read and studied some Classical Latin stories in Italian…My favorite story is the myth of Cupid and Psyche. I have read it from the Metamorphosis written by Apuleius, a Latin writer. This work is one of the very few pieces of Latin literature preserved in its entirety to have reached us. The literary origin of this piece, “The myth of Cupid and Psyche”, could be traced back from the 2nd century B.C. through the Milesian tales believed to have been written by Aristides of Miletus from ancient Greece. It is indeed very interesting to connect from this remote past that has enriched many of the erotic literary masterpieces from Giovanni Bocaccio’s Decameron to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, from Marquis De Sade and D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, up to the Story of O and Emmanuelle. I thought of representing the figures of Cupid or Eros and Psyche in their intimacy, in the sexual act. I have always thought of sex as something extremely private and intimate. This is the reason why the dimensions of the sculptures are small. . In another series of sculptures … I will use the motif of the monstrance, a familiar church paraphernalia. The monstrance itself will be in bronze and it will contain details of some of the erogenous parts of the body in alabaster. From afar, the luminosity of the alabaster piece and the monstrance-inspired motif puts us in a quasi sacred state or an ecclesiastical setting.” - Duddley Diaz, 2010
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY: Agnes Arellano studied sculpture at the University of the Philippines Diliman and in 1988 was awarded the prestigious CCP Thirteen Artists Award. She was also the founder of Pinaglabanan Galleries, a seminal force in the development of contemporary Philippine Art. Arellano has participated in international group exhibitions in Berlin, Fukuoka, Havana, Johannesburg, New York, Brisbane and Singapore. In 2006, her work “Haliya”, the pregnant moon goddess, was magnified into granite four meters long, hand-carved by Korean carvers for the Naru Park beside the Naru River in Korea. Filipino modern artist, Duddley Diaz whose works are displayed in places like San Tommaso a Lama Church, Perugia Italy, has been part of numerous solo shows and group shows in the Philippines, US and Italy from 1984 to present. He studied Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines Diliman, then furthered his art studies in sculpture and painting in Academia di Belle Arti, Florence, Italy. In 2000, he received the Pamana ng Lahi Presidential award for Outstanding Filipino Abroad. In 2005, he received the Grand Prize for Sculpture from the Metrobank Foundation. In 2009, The UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum honoured him with a retrospective entitled “Messenger of the Gods, A Duddley Diaz Retrospective” covering 40 years of his career, and launched his latest book written by Dr. Alice Guillermo entitled, “The Art of Duddley Diaz”. Body and soul runs from June 6 to July 20, 2010 at Galleria Duemila, 210 Loring Street, Pasay City, Metro Manila. The gallery is open Mondays to Saturdays from 10 am to 6 pm For inquiries, contact Galleria Duemila at (632) 831-9990, telefax (632) 833-9815, email: duemila@mydestiny.net
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