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'Epifanie' at Galleria Duemila

"Above these two figures is an inverted man in red, mounted on the topmost spot of this most incredible retablo. Together with the five totem-like figures flanking the frames of the top two panels, this “fallen angel” of sorts invites viewers to rethink individually-held cosmologies and in so doing perhaps arrive at new epiphanies in perceiving the divine."


EPONA BLESSING NO. 2, Duddley Diaz, 2008, polychrome wood (limewood) acrylic+silver and gold leaf, 19.86"x18.32"3.15"

AN epiphany is “an intuitive grasp of reality” through a simple or striking event. It is “an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure” embedded in and born of a most meaningful yet sudden scene or moment. Galleria Duemila invites all to Epifanie: Manifestations of the Sacred, featuring the works of Tuscanny-based Filipino sculptor Duddley Diaz. Diaz essays the divine through traditional iconography, as well as through his appropriations of sacred icons of indigenous and foreign origins.

Diaz’s rendition of the divine is decidedly syncretic. He skirts in and out of belief systems as easily as he does the media of painting and sculpture. Perhaps this should be expected of a Filipino who has become, in the best sense of the phrase, “a man of the world,” rooted in his own culture and tempered by the discipline offered by Europa. The total effect he produces in his works betrays no confusion or inner conflict. There is hardly an element of disarray in his compositions. Instead, a casual symmetry of lines in counterpoint to well-placed primary colors that ultimately cause the eye to explore playfully textured planes, emerges in a most uncontrived manner...folk in ease, but at the same time surrealist in depth.

This folk-surrealist effect can best be seen in Epifanie. The title piece is a veritable retablo of incongruity and fervor in faith. At first glance, the viewer’s eyes are attracted by a bas relief panel of blue and white at the second level of the composition from the base. This panel of three frames depicts Mary’s epiphany—her most miraculous bearing of the word made flesh, the nativity, and her final suffering as la pieta, holding the dead body of Christ. The depiction resembles Matisse’s dance series where the cut-out paper-like figures boldly contrast with the unpainted background. The other panels are not as bold but nonetheless are as intriguing. Below Mary’s epiphany is what appears to be Adam in naked repose with Eve unceremoniously (or perhaps even excruciatingly) emerging from his left rib. The denizens of this endemic Eden, carabaos, pigs and ducks, surround the undisturbed body of the Creator’s first “trustee.”

Above the panel depicting Mary’s epiphany are two “mother figures.” The one to the left has multiple breasts, a characteristic of fertility goddesses found all over Asia with its oldest forms in terra cotta unearthed in the ruins of the Harrapan and Mohenjo-daro civilizations of the Indus Valley, now in Pakistan, dating to some 3,000 years ago. The figure to the right sporting a red face is more difficult to identify. Her pregnant figure, however, implies her significant role as a vessel or a “birther” of creation. Above these two figures is an inverted man in red, mounted on the topmost spot of this most incredible retablo. Together with the five totem-like figures flanking the frames of the top two panels, this “fallen angel” of sorts invites viewers to rethink individually-held cosmologies and in so doing perhaps arrive at new epiphanies in perceiving the divine.

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