| José Parlá’s first New York solo exhibition is on the fourth floor of an old Soho loft building; a manually operated freight elevator takes you up to a space that has been cleared of its usual offering of furniture to make room for his paintings, works on paper and ceramics. Parlá began his career writing on the streets of Miami, with the occasional jaunt up to New York City to join in what was going on in the boroughs at the height of the graffiti movement. “Soho, Manhattan, Circa 1981,” a four-by-six-foot canvas painted in 2008, acknowledges the “old school” writers Parlá was too young to truly be part of, yet from whom he nevertheless learned volumes as he watched their forays into the commercial art world of the 80s. |
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Joan Waltemath for the Brooklyn Rail
Christina Grajales, Inc. November 8 – December 20, 2008
Installation view “Layered Days” José Parlá at Christina Grajales, Inc. Left “Taganga, Colombia” 2008, 6’Ãâ6′, oil, acrylic, ink, enamel, collage, polyurethane and plaster on canvas. Right: “All City Din”, 2008 6′ Ãâ 6′, oil, acrylic, ink, enamel, and plaster on canvas. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Rail.
The antipode of Babel.
José Parlá’s first New York solo exhibition is on the fourth floor of an old Soho loft building; a manually operated freight elevator takes you up to a space that has been cleared of its usual offering of furniture to make room for his paintings, works on paper and ceramics.
Parlá began his career writing on the streets of Miami, with the occasional jaunt up to New York City to join in what was going on in the boroughs at the height of the graffiti movement. “Soho, Manhattan, Circa 1981,” a four-by-six-foot canvas painted in 2008, acknowledges the “old school” writers Parlá was too young to truly be part of, yet from whom he nevertheless learned volumes as he watched their forays into the commercial art world of the 80s. To his credit, Parlá concentrated on the problems inherent in the change of context from the street to the galleries that few of the old school writers had successfully negotiated. A notable exception is, of course, Samo, who later painted under his given name, Jean Michel Basquiat. Parlá’s work takes off from and expands on these roots.
In “Reverberations of Yajé,” like many of Parlá’s works, we tend to read a group of calligraphic lines, hovering at the top of the painting, from right to left like Arabic or Hebrew, yet it is unclear whether they could actually be read by a native speaker or are a recreation of the style. Below these marks, a vast space opens up, and with the awareness that these pieces were painted as reflections of Parlá’s recent journey to the Colombian jungle, the color and forms fall into place as part of an extended undergrowth with the calligraphic marks serving as a canopy. Time serves to open up the volumes in Parlá’s work, and after a while you can believe you’re hearing the sounds of birds as the world outside this 6′ × 12′ canvas falls away.
