With the closure of the LGBTQ+ nightclub Black Cat in Gomila, Palma, a wound was opened that left a deep mark on the Balearic queerspace. The truth is, even if our parents told us otherwise, going out is always important; just as important as the shared spaces we seek out when we crave the gaze of the other. We Stayed Where the Music Was is the story of the relationship between the club and its final romance. It depicts a last night in four acts, four canvases whose urban compositions serve as a conceptual boundary, an emotional stage setting.
Gothic cathedrals sought to reach God through their verticality; contemporary housing developments seem to want to equalize us through their repetitive aesthetic. We sometimes forget that we project our own stories onto places, and thus, the urban environment alone cannot entirely dictate how we exist in the world.
The exploration of the public gaze has been a constant throughout Jaime Urdiales' career: the perspective of abandoned facades, cars parked on the asphalt, fading signs, and flickering neon lights. It is a nostalgic viewpoint, where the absence of figures highlights the loss of public space as a social hub; there are no longer neighbors chatting outside or street vendors passing by. Today, streets merely serve as transit routes between two points, and outdated signs now frame specialty coffee shops or any other venue born from the gentrification pandemic.
Influenced by the photorealism of figures like Robert Bechtle, Urdiales gives the environment a personality of its own, stepping away from the still-life approach favored by the American artist. His images are not merely compositions; they are an anthropomorphization of the surroundings. They act as characters in their own right, fueling an almost cinematic pursuit. Consequently, cities like Los Angeles and New York shaped the artist's early stylistic phase as he roamed these locations, brush in hand.
Growing up in a small town can feel paradoxical when your visual imagination is shaped by the pastel-toned cities of Hollywood movies. Even in his childhood, he felt a sense of disconnect, sparking a youthful, urban yearning for the journey. A trip far, far away, which Urdiales channels into his symbolic cars.
Where do I go when I want to escape myself, to escape this performative masculinity? When will this queer, identity-driven "American dream" finally come true? Ultimately, the destination was always tied to the return: finally being able to play with the Barbies that, in my sheer ignorance, I had denied myself.
Blue hour inside my room
In this first act of the night, Urdiales paints a motel, a scene still carrying the remnants of a sugar-coated Americana, evoking childhood innocence. Ultimately, the composition reflects the metaphorical protagonist's current stage of life: a queer individual experiencing the "coming out" phase, completely immersed in first times, whose idealized view of reality remains intact. Urdiales uses light to set the mood, bringing in the deep blue tones that precede nightfall.
But a motel is just a place of transit, and everything is growing darker. It’s true: in the club, under the cover of darkness, it’s easier to perform your true identity, surrendering to the freedom of the carnival where everyone is equal! But what if they still reject me? What if I still don't fit in, despite everything? What am I supposed to do? You can feel the hostile, burning heat in the air, captured by the car engulfed in flames. Both capitalism and the queer community itself have falsely equated freedom with consumption.
All this fascinates me, but it terrifies me. It scares me a lot.
The silence between songs
There are intangible spaces. Music is one of them, a safe space for the community.
The early Spanish drag queens reclaimed the cuplé and traditional folk songs, much like how, with the rise of pop music, many tracks became gay anthems. Over time, these songs turned into symbols of collective identity: Madonna’s Material Girl, La Casa Azul’s La Revolución Sexual, or Britney Spears’ Toxic, among countless others.
In this second canvas, however, Urdiales isn't talking about the noise; he’s talking about the silence between tracks. The ability to pause for a second, lean unsteadily against the bar, and detach from the frenzy. Loudness always drowns out our train of thought, making us forget our identity struggles, as if the community, with its club nights now turned into consumer clichés, had a subconscious mission to avoid questioning itself.
Urdiales' silence has weight and texture. It materializes in the icy polish of a piano nobody plays and a TV nobody watches, set within an interior reminiscent of a Graceland-style mansion, the ultimate epitome of the American illusion. The warmth of the curtained room wraps around the viewer, walking a fine line between welcoming and detached. Because, in the end, it all comes back to the same truth: amidst the overwhelming intensity of the club, true closeness, the real safe space, is found in others. It's in that first shared glance, in that first alcohol-scented whisper, cheek to cheek, asking:
Hey, do you have a lighter?
Morning on the dancefloor
A party is a celebration of life itself, as it is the only moment when life isn't subordinated to other obligations. It exists in a cyclical, repetitive loop, with no end goal, standing as a structure of its own. Because of its timeless nature, philosopher Byung-Chul Han traces the origins of art back to the festival, as its very essence lies in lingering. This altered sense of time begins and ends when the ritual demands it, not when the clock dictates.
Like Ulysses, we have survived the odyssey of the night buses and made it home.
Urdiales captures this end-of-the-night feeling through one of his signature compositions: the closed shutter of an old, traditional storefront, serving as a tribute to the end of the wildness we just lived. The two tin rats decorating the frame mirror the nighttime bonds we form, birds of a feather flock together!, which become our morning companions, ironically nodding to the feeling of looking like a rat as you stumble home at dawn.
Of the polished, party-ready person who gave their all to the dancefloor the night before, only a smudge on the glass remains. It’s a reflection casting two figures that are, paradoxically, the rodent's worst nightmare: two felines positioned in a way that radiates the invincible feeling of youth. For a fleeting second, the triumph over death felt absolute.
But with the morning comes the lingering memento mori that hits right in the middle of a hangover. Guilt, regret, and goodbyes all arrive hand in hand.
Please, don't leave me alone with all this.
Dust where the music was
How distant the thrill of the unknown feels now, the one we experienced in the adolescence of that first canvas. We’ve danced, we’ve drank, we’ve kissed... the sexual freedom we once dreamed of has fully materialized within us.
Urdiales brings this narrative to a close with a window reflecting a modern-day anachronism: a wig shop displaying voluminous, Marilyn Monroe-style hair. The dissonance is heightened by the kitschy display resting on Corinthian columns, praising a grandeur that, much like the flickering neon sign, is already gone. Aging is taking over, not just the building, but us, too. Drawing inspiration from the archetype of the Goyaesque old woman, Urdiales concludes the story by merging the ruins of the Black Cat with the ruins of the self.
It often feels as though "queer" is synonymous with "young," and that we’ll be able to dance forever, that the only place our community has to drop dead is in the club. My lower back is already starting to ache from standing for too long. With getting older, just like with adolescence, the same questions come back around: What if they reject me because of these wrinkles? What if I still don't fit in, despite everything? What am I supposed to do with all this aging weighing me down?
"For dust you are and to dust you will return," says Genesis 3:19. Or, as Lady Gaga's version puts it for those who die on the dancefloor: 'Battle for your life, Babylon'.
