VALENCIA ROCKS!

There are cities with beaches, cities with cathedrals, cities with respectable museums full of oil paintings and dead kings. And then there is Valencia — a city that sweats music. A city that believes a guitar solo can heal the soul faster than any prescription, and where the bass drum is as essential as the morning coffee. Into this glorious madhouse arrives Valencia Rocks!, a new photography exhibition that blows the dust off polite art shows and drags the viewer face-first into the roaring furnace of live music. The work comes from Rhyan Paul, a British-born, Carcaixent-based photographer who has made it his life’s mission to chase the noise, the passion and the sweat of musicians wherever they choose to detonate.

For more than 30 years he has been stalking rock stages like a war correspondent — leaning into the strobes, dodging flying plectrums, and freezing the fleeting moments where an artist becomes not just a performer but a conduit for whatever divine madness powers the human desire to make noise. His camera has seen it all. Simple Minds. Marky Ramone. Chrissie Hynde. The Waterboys. Aitana. Europe. Def Con Dos. Arde Bogotá. Seguridad Social. Los Rebeldes. Lendakaris Muertos. Búhos. Amistades Peligrosas — and dozens more heroes from both the international touring machine and Valencia’s own homegrown insurgency.

The result? Forty-five framed images — raw, immediate, unapologetically loud. The kind of photographs that smell faintly of beer, guitar strings and adrenaline. The kind of images that could only come from decades spent elbow-deep in Europe’s music subculture, lying in the mud of festivals, crawling through backstage corridors, and sharing the unspoken communion between performer and audience.

Hosted at El Café (Café de la Plaza) in Carcaixent, the show opens January 27 with a press view at 18:00, before unleashing itself upon the public at 19:00. There will be tapas. There will be music. And fate willing, one lucky attendee will walk out with a signed, framed print of Seguridad Social — the sort of prize any respectable Valencian rock fan would trade a limb for.

For those unable to fight their way to Carcaixent in person, a full virtual gallery will debut at www.rhyanpaul.com ensuring the global community of music obsessives can bear witness.

Rhyan Paul is no polite gallery photographer. He is a field operator. A chronicler of the roaring collision between stage lights and human emotion. His work rejects the sterile, the staged and the perfectly posed. Instead, he hunts the moment when music leaves the amplifier, tunnels through the human nervous system, and becomes something spiritual.He does not just photograph performance — he photographs presence.

Valencia, for all its sunshine and vermouth, is also a region with venues, bands and fans who refuse to let the modern world kill live culture. The exhibition serves as love letter and battlefield report — proof that the Valencian live music ecosystem is not merely alive, but thriving, sweating, and screaming.

Supported by a coalition of cultural conspirators — Rock Bottom Magazine, White Camino, The Music Mole, Botanical Cullera, Purpleindigo and El Café — the show also doubles as a philanthropic mission, channeling energy and attention toward the community that fuels it.

In short: Valencia Rocks! is not just an exhibition. It’s evidence. It’s testimony. It’s a rallying cry from a photographer who has spent three decades documenting the sacred chaos of live music. If you love music, this is your pilgrimage.If you don’t, this show may convert you.If you can’t handle loud, passionate, unapologetically human experience — stay home.

For more information: Rhyan Paul