Internationally acclaimed Oklahoma artists, Gloria Abella de Duncan and Ron Duncan exhibited Life At Play October 8 through November 27, 2004 at Untitled [ArtSpace].

Gloria Abella’s art is about the essence of the human condition.  Men and women float into the visual space of the canvas along with plants, animals, and abstract symbols.  Her vision of life and art is a playful one with ambiguities, and one is never sure exactly what is real and what is fantasy.  Her art explores our relationship to the spirit world, gender, power, and our own humanity. This is literate art with words from different languages and letters scattered through the images, drawn from her own experiences of living in various societies and speaking different languages. 

Abella de Duncan studied both art and anthropology, and she combines those interests in her work.  In the Amazon, shamans see the spirit of every person as an alter ego either sitting on their head or shoulders.  In that world spirits are thought of as animals, maybe a bird, monkey, or some other local animal.  She adapts that imagery to the contemporary urban world with torsos topped by our icons of today:  a woman with her house and a man with his pot of gold. This exhibition also included ceramics works, some by Abella de Duncan, and others by her collaborator, Ron Duncan. His pieces include totems and suns that explore the primal imagery of art and the energy of our deepest inclinations toward worship and bonding. His background as an anthropologist and author come into the pieces in ways that are sometimes surprising.

Gloria Abella de Duncan was born in South America of Sephardic parents and grew up in a family environment of art and music.  Later, she studied with Larry Rivers and John Cage, two of the most important icons of twentieth century art.  Abella de Duncan has an international career, exhibiting in individual and group shows in the U.S., Israel, Japan, Latin America, and Europe.  She has been recognized with many awards, including those from the Latin American Graphics Biennial, the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, UNESCO, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Leslie Powell Foundation Biennial. She has exhibited internationally in museums and galleries, including Christie’s in London, Louis Stern in Los Angeles, the Carrillo Gil Museum in Mexico City, and the Bellevue Art Museum in Seattle.  Her work has been collected by museums, corporations and private individuals internationally, ranging from the National Museum of Colombia to Occidental Petroleum, the Royal Bank of Canada, and the Alcoa Corporation.  Abella de Duncan has been a visiting artist in England at the University of Essex and the Camberwell School of Art (London), also in China (University of Xinjiang) and Israel (the Mishkan Omanim in Herzlya).  She has also been a professor of art at Universities in Puerto Rico, Colombia, and the U.S.  Currently she is a studio artist and Lecturer in Art at OBU and at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art School. She received her graduate degree in art from SUNY, Buffalo, and she also studied anthropology and pre-Columbian art at National University in Mexico City.

Ron Duncan came to ceramics from anthropology.  He has a Ph.D. in the field and has written extensively on pre-Columbian and folk ceramics in Latin America.  His books on ceramics have been nominated for national prizes.  He has studied at Oxford University, Indiana University, and Alfred University in New York, and he has exhibited internationally from Japan to Italy.  In making ceramics he likes to explore the primal religious themes that commonly appear in early human societies, such as totems and sun disks.  The medium of ceramics is one of the earliest artistic media used by humans, and it continues to root us in the earth from which we come.  His primal images are modernized by the use of glaze technology and colors that are contemporary.  Duncan is a former University Chancellor and Dean and has been a Fulbright Scholar and received awards from the National Endowment of the Arts.

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© Untitled [ArtSpace]

Untitled [ArtSpace]
1 NE 3rd, Oklahoma City, OK 73104

Gallery hours: Tues, Wed, Thus: 11am-6pm / Fri: 11am-8pm / Sat: 11am-4pm
Contact: untitledartspace@1ne3.org   T: 405.815.9995    F: 405.813.2070