Georges Bataille said that Christianity was the least religious of religions because it had banished the eroticism of inner experience. Only some mystics like St. Teresa or John of the Cross were able to access supreme ecstatic and spiritual stages of fusion.
While in ancient religions was in the ritual sacrifice where eroticism and mystical experience came together, as a carnal transgression and death drive, Catholicism fell into the paradox of placing access to the sacred, the secret of being, in the field of Evil.
These are difficult times for mystical, few pious women have orgasms with enlightening visions…, so if someone tries to gather erotic and sacred it tends to be read as sacrilegious provocation.
But the allegory of the fiery religiosity, whose ultimate expression was Santa Teresa transverberation sculpted by Bernini, continues fascinating to artists who updated the baroque interest in capturing the tremulous flesh, tearing passions.
During her stay in Rome Juan Francisco Casas immersed himself in these baroque visions, the throb of libido trapped in the softness of marble (Ludovica, Santa Teresa, Proserpina …), visiting churches and museums, soaking up the languid glamour of Cagnacci Magdalena… In his bic pen drawings moves on the paper levitations, divine kidnappings and raptures … transverberations in turgid bodies smelling leather and latex.
Nor forget the cruel counterpart of erotic drive, as caravaggists captured when inspiring on necrophiliac Bible’s scenes. A Judith with firm buttocks facing the severed head of Holofernes, Vanitas that blaspheme … next to crashed cars as a ballardian reference…
Because this Eternal City of white effigies tremulous of rapture and Michelangelesque terribilità, is involved in tragic fogging, such as that coming from the outskirts of town, the resort of Ostia, offbeat hero to who Casas pays tribute filling in the same flow of blood and sexual secretions, ecstasy and atonement.
What is also eternal is the complete lack of sense of humor of a local specimen with Falangist ancestry denouncing as perverse what is merely a projection of their own depravity; that in a reflex action of satanic possession or psychotic break start to paint graffiti on windows of the galleries who dare to combine sex and religion, condemning the author to the stake; fanatic reactions that alone justify the reference to the murder of Pasolini.
O(h)Romao(h)Morte
Galería Fernando Pradilla until 20/05/2016