Jose Parla

Art Brokerage: Jose Parla Cuban Artist: Language, writing and seeing are linked at several levels in Jose Parla's semiotically inflected paintings: the distinction between image and text is consistently denied image-as-text, text-as-picture both modes are often overlapping and present in the same painting. This glimpse makes us aware that we are not mere passive bystanders, but active participants in the world we see, that our senses produce for us moment-to-moment. Jose Parle's paintings are composed from several distinct types of source material: the purely abstract (painterly) dabbing, gesture and layering of paint; collaged materials and detritus from the streets of the world (and that may include type or other writing and images); writing, which is easily the dominant material of these works, filling and often obscuring its contents in successive layers. Rarely is this written material actually fully legible in any of his works, usually it lies at the boundary between abstract marking and calligraphy, complicated and obfuscated by the palimpsest process he employs throughout. Parla's works have appeared in major exhibitions in London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Paris, and recently in Stages for the Livestrong Foundation at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris. Deitch Projects, New York, and Ohwow in Miami. Parla's solo show titled: Walls, Diaries, and Paintings at Bryce Wolkowitz in March 2011, which was accompanied by a new monograph published by Hatje Cantz. His most recent exhibition Character Gestures, opened September 2011 in Los Angeles at the Ohwow gallery in West Hollywood. Parla's latest projects include a collaboration with French artist JR for the 11th Havana Biennial in Cuba entitled " Wrinkles of the City, a mural painting commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the new Bam Fisher Theatre in Brooklyn, the Parla Frares exhibition with his brother Rey Parla at the renowned Colette in Paris, an exhibition at Scad Museum in Savannah, Georgia with fellow alumni Wendy White entitled Performing Painting, and a public mural commissioned by the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn. Mr. Parla is also part of the advisory board of No Longer Empty. Jose Parla studied painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, and The New World School of the Arts in Miami. Listings wanted.