“LINA LLAGUNO CIANI’S PLAYFUL BEING”

To celebrate the reopening of the renowned Galleria Duemila at its new home at 210 Loring Street, Pasay City, it invites us to the exhibition of Filipino-Italian artist, Lina Llaguno Ciani, titled “One Hundred Forty Eggs,” from March 11 to 31, 2006. On view will be 11 oil paintings and 16 drawings of Llaguno Ciani’s favorite artistic topic, the egg.

“One Hundred Forty Eggs” is a celebration of the prodigious quality of nature, and of new beginnings. Eggs have always been the metaphor for creation since ancient civilizations adopted it as the symbol of fertility and renewal. Revered by the Celts, the Mesopotamians, the Greeks, and the Zulus as symbols of the Fertility Goddess, the Egg not only is the container for Life, but also nourishes our bodies with its life-giving liquids. The fact that it contains an embryo has always given the Egg its special place among human societies as a metaphor for the cradle, and how its innocent, fragile state also means uncertainty and subjection to the vicissitudes of Fate. Lina Llaguno Ciani has taken the Egg and made it the vehicle of her recurring theme of hopeful beginnings, and of the ability of humanity to transcend tragedy and fickle fate to emerge from its cradle physically pure, and spiritually cleansed.

In her silent, chromatically elegant paintings of still lifes and landscapes, the Egg becomes a part of the environment, playful and surreal in its evocation of idle summer afternoons whiling away at an abandoned beach, or arranged in delicate groups and clusters, tied with string, and dangling on walls. Birds and turtles, layers of such Eggs, can be seen, that relates these artworks with a healthy environment, imbued with a clear, liquid light suffused with tropical vigour and contrast. At times, the Egg becomes a seed, from which spring delicate flowers, whose serene beauty is nourished by the power of Nature. There are also studies of Eggs done on handmade abaca paper, which produces a unique, antiquated texture, thematically uniting the white Egg with its naturally brown Mother, and becomes vibrant with its various juxtapositions of ropes, rocks, butterflies, and birds—signalling the refreshing environment that Lina recalls growing up in.

At the same time, Lina Llaguno Ciani also dwells on the nurturing side of the Egg, its pure innocence and delicacy that does not threaten, but delights and stimulates the mind with its ancient curvilinear geometry. Her training at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts and the Accademia delle Belli Arti in Perugia, as well as her stay in her adopted homeland Italy, in a studio overlooking the lovely lake at Trevigniano Romano, has allowed her to fuse her Filipino spiritual identity with the Western techniques of illusionistic representation and Modernist simplification, tinged with a personal chromatic liquid purity.  Regularly visiting the Philippines also means work for this prodigious artist, in her studio at Sogod, Bacacay in Bicol facing the Pacific Ocean, a creative member of our wandering Diaspora that art critic Alice Guillermo has noted in some of her works.

For exhibition inquiries, please contact the gallery through Thess Ponce / Beth Manuel at 831-9990, telefax 833-9815 or email duemila@mydestiny.net