José
Parlá
ADAPTATION
/ TRANSLATION
10th October
- 8th. November 2008
“As
our society moves forward through time, ever faster and in ever
more complex patterns of living, we forget our spirit - our
inner growth. We
believe ourselves to be on the cusp of evolution but perhaps
we are only experiencing an involution. The marks on the walls
of our cities are perhaps
a testimonial, like scars of a wounded civilization.”
José
Parlá: thoughts written from Taganga, Colombia. July
10th, 2008
Brooklyn
based artist José Parlá will be showing in a spectacular
and much anticipated first solo show in London at the Elms Lesters
Painting Rooms.
Born
in Miami in 1973, Parlá then moved to Puerto Rico. After
being raised in the Caribbean island by his Cuban parents, Parlá
returned to Miami at the age of nine where he began painting
and remained there until being awarded,a scholarship to Savannah
College of Art & Design in Georgia.
In Adaptation / Translation, Parlá further explores the
wanderings of urban populations to translate these personal
experiences and make visible manifestations of what lies beneath
our
surfaces.
By drawing inspiration from the urban landscape, the energy
and memory which feeds him, José Parlá creates
a visual narrative of his experiences in different cities. Through
the multilayered, psycho-geographical, calligraphic nature of
his work he embeds these stories in his paintings and invites
the viewer to discover his vision of the
environment.
Parlá
is therefore not just a painter, but a new kind of novelist;
a modern storyteller who uses wall gestures, the writing on
the wall, and found advertisings to reconstruct complex stories
and anatomies.
José
Parlá began painting under the name Ease in 1983 on city
walls, and while painting in the tradition of New York subway
art, he also was experimenting on canvas with the desire to
translate the decaying environment of derelict places which
later inspired his cityscapes aesthetic and continues to inform
his work today.
Parlá’s
paintings reveal a silent message of time and history spoken
through the walls of the world’s cities; a landscape which
speaks of deterioration, neglect, and abandonment. The results,
whilst beautiful, with their multicolours and hidden memories,
are significant in that they reflect some of the darker aspects
of our civilization.
Elms
Lester Painting Rooms will publish a limited edition book to
accompany the exhibition, fully illustrated and with an essay
by critical theorist Michael Betancourt, an authority on José
Parlá’s work, and an introduction by author, academic
and collector Saeb Eigner.
“What
Parlá’s work provides to its viewers is a way to
re-see the city and re-engage the value of urban life.”<
Michael Betancourt
“Like
Gerhard Richter, Parlá sees our art-historical notions
of abstraction and abstract expressionism as having inextricably
and poetically woven themselves in our contemporary understanding
of the real, the authentic, the dramatic, the historic, the
classic, the modern, the global, the magical, the African, the
human.”<
Greg
Tate is a writer who lives in Harlem, USA.
press enquiries
should be directed to:
<
marta.bogna@ideageneration.co.uk
