Untitled

"In the late eighties I was commuting to work in Barcelona. Looking out through the window on the rail journey there and back, I witnessed the inexorable deterioration of the Vallès corridor to Barcelona. A Dantesque urban landscape of industrial estates, warehouses, precarious housing estates, rubbish dumps and all forms of transport infrastructure were transforming the old agricultural region of Vallès Oriental into one immense suburb, in the backyard of the big city. Having left behind the hills that had been exploited and laid waste by the Asland cement works near Montcada, the entrance into Barcelona was equally devastating. Unfortunately, the Francoist obsession with development had just kept on going after the transition to democracy. When I shut up the studio in the evening, after a day’s work, the images accumulated during the course of the day were being expressed through my hands, literally through my hands rather than my mind. I painted with my hands, with movements full of rage and impotence until I was exhausted. I painted until I could no more, until the painting began to shine with its own light; with a strange, twilight light, of desolate brightness". Vicenç Viaplana