The (in)visible cities of Damian

Parallel to the road there is a city carved out of dreams. An unnamed city. I got to it as you get to the truth, by chance. I was thirsting after walking long days in the desert; tired of running, I rested my head on a backpack I was carrying almost empty, there were no supplies left, and in the daydream my fear of snakes, scorpions and so much sand without water, disappeared; I let myself flopping like a feather in the quicksand idea of ​​the inevitability of fate with the phrase "let it be god’s will".

I lost consciousness, fainting again. I think I heard the sound of a helicopter and agitated people surrounding, then I knew nothing more until now. I am in a spacious, high-ceilinged room, walls without frames and decorations, vast pointed arched windows where I like to watch this massive city.

I have scoured the floor looking for windows to peek into a tailspin. This building might be one of the highest in the area, as each landscape looks like a grid. The aerial perspective gives me vertigo. I have vertigo and for the first time in my life I experienced the horror, joyfull. It is a delicious fear: I am alive! No matter whether asleep or awake, I'm alive.

I'm not sleepy. I'm not alone, I walked through every room on this floor, there are people of different ages, colors, smells ... but no stairs. How long have I been here? I wish to get out, get to know the city below. I still have not spoken to my roommates. I do not know what language they speak. I feel that sometimes they look at me with intrigue, and though I tried to talk to a boy with an enigmatic smile (I like happy people), it didn’t work: he cannot hear nor see.

Sometimes I would like to talk to someone, to know where I am, who put wings on trains and tricycles (from my window I see them go past so far), who are these people and what does F-20 mean, the code printed on each of the doors of our rooms, graffiti on walls in hallways and bathrooms, tattoos on the foreheads of some of my neighbors ...

The funny thing is that our rooms are cities by themselves, the closest room to mine is a skyscraper and my bed is a roof. We also have parks, health and education institutions, banks, press, shopping malls, bars, sky with planes, trains, boats, light and darkness, and there is also death. Our cities, post-modern by nature, have different architectural styles, emotional and physical eclecticism, marks of good and painful memories (and drugs to relieve them). While the destruction is our fate (beyond the economic, ecological and moral crisis that make urban living so complex), I wanted to go through countless city-planets and numbers, and other stories of the ego, reason, societies and third wars ... this is not a time for gentlemen saviors, nor have I ran into Shakespeare or Freud, nor with Italo Calvino or Marco Polo, or with Spider-man, there is no truth or lie here, neither a space defined as a country, continents or planets ... these cities exist because they exist in my mind and in yours, and here we were (un)happy. However, there is nothing I miss more than the mysterious flavor of the grass, the aurora and the waves. Sometimes I run away to the forest, to the mountains looking for the howl of the wolf, to the sea, to the desert ... Oh deliver me from my bondages!

A piece of wood on the path of Damian Valdes became the first construction of the first city his hands assembled. He told me wood resembled the shape of a building, then another one looked like a boat ..., and before having the idea of ​​a city he was creating small buildings from raw materials he found. Then with his tools he designed streets on a base where he placed those first objects he made. This procedure was repeated as new forms and inspiring elements arose: scrap metal and fragments of wood and plastic, metal filaments, old toys, etc., all this growing his city. A building today, a telescope tomorrow, a car with photo camera and wings, another building, a Harley motorcycle, a train, a submarine, more buildings ... All they, extravagant and detailed, were part of cities that progressed and multiplied very fast. The withering process amazes those who receive his work. The Riera Studio collective knows him closely and encourages him to create, just as he did when he engaged in his first drawings.

Today, Friday, March 13th, 2015, this gallery (re)opens its doors to the (in)visible – unmentionable and timeless – cities of Damian, hoping the viewer will discover them, go into them, walk, live their own experience, stumble, lift themselves in a timely flying-car; find the Gothic city of superheroes with modern skyscrapers, a temple, war and peace, hope and discomfort, (un)love, their history or others’ history, aquatic, terrestrial and surreal worlds… and then they find a way out.