My History
Hi my name is David León, also known as @ds.leon, I am a
multidisciplinary artist with a primary focus on figurative sculpture
and also have experience in painting. My story began on a stormy
night in the summer of 1979 in Barcelona when a 21-year-old woman
gave birth to her first child, a small, big-headed, and hairy boy.
I
studied in different traditional private schools, where "donkey,
the letter only enters with blood" was the motto. Throughout
those years, I was humiliated and mistreated, which led me to hide my
connection with the plastic arts out of shame and embarrassment. At
the age of 14, my mother, after spending a fortune on "RUBIO"
handwriting notebooks, decided to take me to a psychologist. Yes, I
had dyslexia, so I couldn't write or draw, let alone read. With that
diagnosis, a new chapter of my life began: a teacher taught me how to
write again. I continued my high school studies and graduated as a
Technician in Metal Construction. During those years, the explosion
of rap and graffiti took place, which captivated me. In 1994, Montana
Colors arrived in paint stores, and armed with the most colorful
sprays of the time, I started painting walls like crazy. Although my
artwork was not very good, I continued to do it impulsively because I
felt an internal need to express myself. Some considered me an
artist, but for others, I was simply a vandal dirtying the walls of
Barcelona. The years passed, and punk conquered me: the music, the
concerts, the libertarian collectives, the squats... They kept me
away from the art world for some time. It was another way to express
myself to a society that not long ago had emerged from a
dictatorship. This time, the materials and mediums were the same, but
the colors and messages were different: blacks, reds, and yellows. It
was a rebellious youth filled with demands for labor rights, gender
equality, discontent with wars and hard drugs, among other things.
Following
my curiosity and need to express what I feel, my unique way of seeing
life and what surrounds me, the day came when I transitioned from the
street to exhibition halls to explain and share my story and concerns
with a different kind of audience through art. I wanted to
demonstrate in a visual way that a rebellious dyslexic has much to
say, teaching through error and strike-throughs that peculiar way of
seeing the world upside down, from front to back and back to front,
with spelling mistakes, scribbles, colored numbers and letters, with
errors that are not erased but highlighted to proudly explain what
goes on inside my head. My creations are filled with long-legged
characters who run immobile and with their heads down all day,
twisted wires like society itself, a sick society trapped in the 6.8
inches of a glass screen, slaves to the "like," scraps,
waste, colors, and paintings from a landfill. That is my work, that
is who I am.
A
graffiti artist, punk, dyslexic who believes in a better future.
And
remember, young one, you are not lazy, you are simply dyslexic.
