Polarities materialized in the wake of the pandemic when the artist felt its impacts acutely; after months spent in a hospital with COVID19, Parlá's doctors weren't sure if he'd ever paint again. But, an artist to his core, he proved them wrong, and the works that came about carry a heightened sense of spirituality and empathy. More than ever, Parlá sees within his practice the threads that unite us and how our actions (and passivity) become our legacy. A prominent characteristic of his work, the paintings in Polarities share a strong sense of centrum: a heart or prime mover from which bold brushstrokes and elegant lines of script emanate. These marks indicate the beginning of time, the moment from which every passing day and its events have radiated, crashed, and splintered. They are maps and topographies, micro and macro ecosystems.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Library Street Collective, Detroit, 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
