The immersive, monumental paintings documented here were the first works that José Parlá created after his recovery from a life-threatening battle against Covid. The series was installed in the iconic Beaux-Arts Court at the Brooklyn Museum in 2022.
José Parlá (born 1973 in Miami, lives and works in Brooklyn) is a critically acclaimed, multidisciplinary Cuban-American artist and painter, working in painting, large-scale murals, photography, video and sculpture. He started painting walls in Miami's underground art scene of the early 1980s and went to study at Miami Dade Community College, New World School of the Arts and Savannah College of Art & Design.
Parlá is also known for community engagement as a co-founder of Wide Awakes.
Parlá's work has been exhibited at The Bronx Museum, The Bronx, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Istanbul'74, Istanbul; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; National YoungArts Foundation, Miami, FL; Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson, NC; and the Havana Biennial, Havana, among others. Parlá's work is in several public collections including the British Museum, London; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; POLA Museum of Art, Hakone; and the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana.
"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
