REY DESNUDO Y CHICO MUERTO

On a summer night in Bilbao, sex and violence come together, the anger of all time is concentrated in one look of hatred.
Somewhere on the planet, the painting of a naked king has been hidden for centuries. Maybe it has already been eaten away by damp, destroyed by fire. Maybe, layer by layer, it has been painted over. Maybe the painting never even existed.

In the early hours of Saturday 11 June 2016, Doña Casilda Park in Bilbao is witness to a look of hatred that buries an infinite chain of men and women entombed in the anonymity of history. “There is a wheel that connects certain people in the dark. In clandestinity. In masculinity.” A teenage Roman emperor. A lieutenant in the Prussia of the future Frederick II. A young man in 1980s Tokyo. A high school student in downtown Bilbao. All are connected by violence and sex, love and death, their lives and their respective endings concentrated in a 58-second viral video. What is obscene? What is vulnerable?

“Surely, the man who paints/who kills another will not go down in history, because there are as many nameless criminals as there are anonymous artists, and as many lost paintings as there are unpunished murders.”

Rey Desnudo y Chico Muerto [Naked King and Dead Boy] is the latest project of Pabellón 6’s Gazte Konpainia and addresses homophobia and hate crimes, fashioning links between real characters from History and fictional protagonists from contemporary Bilbao with an uncensored, open and universal perspective that challenges the viewer about their role in the face of hatred and violence, as well as the legacy of preceding generations on today’s LGBTI youth.