In MesoMorphine:PAX AMERICANA and other Myths, Luis Valderas has blended together a new mestizaje, a mythological mural that overlays our past and our present, that exposes the sacred and the profane in their insane interactions, their life and death struggle to be or to disappear, to become part of the pattern of a huge pattern, something that when connected together details an entire universe in the eye of a larger, repeated universe.
Valderas mixes the Mesoamerican images of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, and guerreros aztecas with the technological assembly lines of war, corporate industry, and consumable, disposable masses of people. He overlays these elements on the symbols of liberty, which have been distorted, distended and destroyed by the corruption of war, in the name of peace.
They are disturbing images, intricately fit together. Now especially, in this time of words and an Orwellian "Truth is Lies" usage of words, we have need of his images, his art, which even in the insanity of war, abuse and lies, helps us see the big picture, the huge pattern, the giant machine of which we form only a tiny but repeated pattern of a cog. It is a gargantuan mural, each piece of art fitting into the others, like one immense painting, one superview of the universe, seen from the eye of an Aztec God, larger and more fluid than that of a single piece of art, and filled with intricate patterns in stark blacks and whites, patterns made of eternal icons of borders, pyramids, sunbursts, exodus, maquiladoras, rivers, missiles and the frozen skull-teeth smiles of calaveras.
It is ironic that so many of Valderas’ images center on the Statue of Liberty, but this one is a statue which instead of hands with a torch, sprouts ICBM missiles, which instead of a human face, sprouts a techno-pacman-type calavera. She is grimacing like Death, she is covered with maquiladoras and warships, and the huddled masses below her are also reflective calaveras. Truth is Lies, Peace is War, and the "lives" of those many huddled below her, reflect only death.
The Statue , then, of what? Of La Migra? Of corrupted power and greed, allowing people to sweat out their energy and their lives, to squeeze out the last drops of their vigor, and then to be rounded up and deported, like useless and used discarded pieces of machinery. His art recalls the millions who have died in the locked backs of trucks that have promised them entry into this country, millions who have suffocated, scraping metal walls, dreaming of liberty but never reaching it; the millions who have died because of bombs built in the name of peace; the millions who have been lied to and told pretty stories which ended up virtual or technological and never made of true flesh and blood.
Prisionero
ChicanoStruggle
india ink & graphite on wood
18" x 24"
Cosmic Force Feed
india ink & graphite
8' x 4'
His paintings are teeming with worker people, faceless, expressionless, like the Statue herself, people herded into INS trucks, into maquiladoras, into destruction. They make the viewer want to protest, to search for a face of justice, to demand better of these symbols. Watching these portrayals, we shout "But these people, called "illegal", are not! You say they have no papers, but those of the great prestige and power have no papers either, for their papers are corrupt, fake, based manipulation and lies. Read the signs between his paintings: ‘Fake papers backed war’ (The Courier-Mail, London), ‘Daddy, why did we have to attack Iraq?’, ‘Daddy, do we always re-name foods whenever another country doesn’t do what we want?’ Those who parade behind the symbols and lie, and re-interpret and re-name are the ones who are truly illegal. These, the ones rounded up and trucked and used and deported, these are the people who make our nation, huddled, consumed, disposed of…. They are the people, the workers, lovers, teens, dreamers, believers, who build our nation, without documents to justify their contributions!" Valderas’ art demands the viewer fit all the paintings together into one giant painting, like finally seeing the pieces of the puzzle fit together.
PAX AMERICANA
triptych-india ink & graphite
6' x 4'
A Little Bit of Soul
india ink & graphite
5" x 7"
All Roads Lead To America
india ink & graphite on wood
3' x 4'
Another Black Tide
india ink & graphite
5" x 7"
The Sky is Innocent
india ink & graphite
4' x 4'
Cancion de Barbas de Oro
india ink & graphite on wood
3' x 8'
Rocket Tezcatlipoca
india ink & graphite
5" x 7"
Valderas’ art does not passively document and accept; it screams in angry protest against the dehumanization. It shouts that the Emperor has no clothes, and that the Statue is sending out not light but bombs, that the smiles are the empty fleshless smiles of skulls, that the gods of Quetzalcoatl and OmeCihuatl have not left us, but that they, like the original statue of liberty, are in mourning for a humane past. Yet his images also breathe hope, the hope that our history is still here, within us, dressed in the present. The Rocket Texcatlipoca sprouts from a maguey plant wearing stars and stripes and rocket claws on its hands. It is a warning, but will we listen?
Pax Americana is a warning-rant against war, a screaming-bloody-murder prayer for peace, an expose of dehumanizing death and the whispered warning that this kind of greed and evil is a fast track to nowhere…. It helps us see the fleshless calavera, grimacing like a chomping technological pac-man with hollow, blinded eyes and contagious uniformity, and seeing it, miss the human face, and demand to create it within our own minds, to draw it within our hearts.
Asi En La Tierra Como En El Cielo
india ink & graphite
6' x 4'
Yet Valderas’ art is full of spirituality and hope, it is the threat of the future grimacing down upon the evils of the present. While we try to avoid our consciences, ignore the ecological implications and the human suffering, even his titles shout "Goodby Blue Skies", "Divine Intervention", and "The Sky is Innocent." This is a prophecy, in the Old Testament sense of the word. In the Old Testament sense, a prophet is not one who foresees the future, but one who interprets the present. This is the work of Valderas., seeing clearly the contradictions and the blasphemies all around us. He sees clearly that there is a Cosmic Totem, a Babel Bird, and a 0% APR, where skeletons and stars and stripes stand on a broken sphere of a graph. It is not unpatriotic; it is ULTIMATELY patriotic, demanding more of our symbols than their physical existence. He demands that our symbols DO what they say they stand for. A spiritual shaman not satisfied with lip-service to liberty and justice for all, Valderas takes patriotism to a more demanding level. He demands, in his words, "an ofrenda that venerates our ancestral and future sangre" a place where the "calavera is used as a vessel traversing time and space, linking all and reminding our past, present and future of the fragile nature of our physicality."
This is the Constitution. This is the Bill of Rights. This is the Popol Vuh,
...saying throughout twenty-five centuries.
"So be it; my light is great.
I am the walkway and I am the foothold of the people,
because my eyes are of metal.
My teeth just glitter with jewels
and turquoise as well; they stand out blue,
with stones like the face of the sky."
-El Popol Vuh (The Mayan Book Of Creation)
St. Buzz and The Rabbit
india ink & graphite
3' x 4'
The stark boldness of black and white drawings is watched over, along opposite walls, by the colorful calaveras, haunting us with the exaggerated smiles of skulls, their absent flesh baring eternal toothpaste smiles.
Valderas grabs the icons of our everyday lives, here on the border, and forces them to confront each other in naked face, acknowledging the many lives of death. He takes us to a special place of honesty, of patriotism to a planet, of responsibility to human existence "in which the mind can walk across the puente to visit el Mercado of life on the border. Metaphysic conflict expressed through neo-meso-american eyes. Modern Aztec writing. Crystalline views of change."
Vision of the Smoking Mirror
india ink & graphite
4' x 4'
Prometheus Rebound
india ink & graphite
6' x 4'
Despite the harshness of the black and white machine-based figures in his drawings, Valderas’ exhibit lets the voices and the souls of the people of this continent be heard. Pax Americana is a courageous confrontational grito that says the souls of these people supercede the power of bombs, dollars, missiles, maquiladoras, nations, borders and statues….
-Carmen Tafolla
Flying the Friendly Skies
india ink & graphite
3' x 4'
Digital Dream
india ink & graphite
24" x 28"
Fungus
india ink & graphite
5" x 7"
Phantoms
india ink & graphite
5" x 7"
Coronation
india ink & graphite
4' x 4'
Solstice
india ink & graphite
18" x 20"
American Labyrinth-1
india ink & graphite
5" x 7"