Spoonfed is proud to present Miami native, New York based artist José Parlá
for his Miami solo debut and book launch (pre-opening) December 6th, 2006 and reception Dec, 8th at The Mitchell Rubenstein's Park Avenue Loft located in the middle of South Beach and the Art Deco District one block from the Bass Museum of Art: 2228 Park Avenue Miami Beach, FL 33139. Tel: 305.637.3750.
Miami, December 2006 − “CITYSCAPES” marks Parlá’s first Miami solo exhibition.
José Parlá’s paintings are immediately powerful with a swaying rhythm and an unruly soulfulness that embraces rather than overwhelms; at once balanced and complex, both mysterious and deeply lyrical, abstract and intensely literal. His images occupy vast spaces filled with windswept clouds, commercial poster fragments, and remembered architecture while stylized calligraphic writings introduce grace and tension as a distinctly human gesture. The compositions are often mounted or executed directly on wood panel, and the solidity of this foundation gives warmth and mass to the paintings, upholding the illusion of the spaces they describe. José works on a large scale using materials and methods of architectural construction—cement, wood and vinyl—as well as traditional art incorporating paper, paint, powdered dye, wax, and ink. Parlá’s expert, passionate brushwork and subtly shifting palettes resolve themselves into walls, tags, skies and sidewalks, as seen through the veils of time and memory. When discussing the work he often uses terms like synthetic and segmented, referring to the world’s cities as virtual palimpsests, upon which are recorded in literal, figurative and ongoing layering process of the personal histories of countless anonymous passersby.
Though still quite young, the conceptual passions that would become the foundation of Parlá’s voice as an artist have been on his mind since he was a child. Born in Miami into a family of Cuban exiles, Parlá moved to Puerto Rico at an early age before returning to Miami when he was nine. He currently lives and works in New York, and only recently traveled to Cuba for the first time. His life, like his work, is therefore at once extremely particular and generally reflective of the wanderings of today's urban populations. Moving was never a simple question of packing his bags. Instead, he augmented his aesthetic observations with an analytical, almost sociological perspective on the cities in which he lingered and through which he walked and continues to walk.
Parlá was awarded the Francis McCommon Scholarship to the Savannah College of Art & Design, Georgia in 1989. At New World School of the Arts he studied Advanced Painting with Mel Alexemberg. He has exhibited locally and internationally from Miami, Los Angeles, New York to Paris and Tokyo. His work is featured in the collections of Agnes B., Tom Ford, Katy Barker, and has been published in various publications such as Tokion, Booth Clibborn’s 718 Brooklyn Style, Juxtapoz, BLK/MRKT’s One (Die Gestalten) and The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Parlá was selected by Manon Slome to exhibit his work with Mimmo Rotella at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York in 2004. José was recently invited to exhibit his work and lecture on painting and printmaking classes at Whitworth College and MAC Museum in Spokane, Washington.
