José Parlá
| José Parlá | |
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José Parlá
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| Born | 1973 Miami, Florida |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Savannah College of Art & Design, Georgia / New World School of the Arts, Miami |
| Known for | Art, Sculpture, Painting, Photography |
| Notable work | ONE: Union of the Senses @ One World Trade Centre |
| Awards | Grand Prize, Best Documentary Short, Best U.S. Premiere, Heartland Film Festival For Wrinkles of the City, Havana Cuba |
| Website | www |
José Parlá (1973), is a Brooklyn-based artist who is known for his paintings, architectural collaborations, sculpture and photography. His work has received critical acclaim and lies between the boundary of abstraction and calligraphy.
While Parlá works at various scales and with different mediums, he is publicly known for his permanent installations of large-scale paintings. These paintings are found within numerous notable North American institutions from The One World Trade Center in NYC to the Hunt’s Library by Snøhetta in Raleigh’s North Carolina State University.
Within Parlá’s work; either large or small, through sculpture or painting, there are layers of hidden stories. Evoking the pace of a frenetic metropolis, he constructs his paintings improvisationally by layering materials- "I’m really interested in the way our lives are built up out of memory and history, and how we reflect that in our surroundings."
Parlá has exhibited worldwide and collaborated with artists from various countries. In 2012, Jose worked with French artist JR on a piece titled "Wrinkles of the City: Havana", Cuba a project, which in the same year was selected to be in the 11th Havana Biennial. As part of the collaboration, Parlá and JR co-directed a documentary by the same title that was awarded the Grand Prize for Documentary Short and Best U.S. Premiere Documentary Short in 2013.
José Parlá started painting in the early 1980s, exhibiting his works in the streets of Miami, and studied at Miami Dade Community College, New World School of the Arts and Savannah College of Art & Design.
Parlá’s heavily layered paintings can often resemble distressed city walls. Art historian and writer Greg Tate writes: "What José Parlá's paintings force us to realize, as good historical paintings always do, is that given enough time and entropy even the hurtling locomotive motion of the streets can be arrested, contemplated, symbolically apprehended, studied, replicated. The temptation to call Parlá a 'post-graffiti’ painter is great but I'd prefer we recognize him as a historical landscape painter even though his historical landscape is made of concrete, wood and wallboard and his 'histories' derive from personal memories and from events buried and embedded in the gorgeous erosions and ruination time and weather will deposit on your average urban walls."
Parlá’s most well known works encompass his permanent large- scale paintings that can be found in various academic and cultural institutions all over North America:
In 2014, Parlá was commissioned to paint a piece for the One World Trade Centre in New York City. Visitors to the lobby of One World Trade Centre is greeted by Parlá's colorful 90 ft mural titled ONE: Union of the Senses which stands as a symbol of diversity. "The lively, jewel-toned mural will greet an estimated 20,000 visitors a day. I think that the role of the art is to create life within a building, said Mr. Edelman, It's not just about white marble walls, it's about spirit and life." Parla has said that "It was very important to me that this painting would reflect a massive respect to the situation and event and the families, and a massive respect for the site."
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