José Parlá was born in the United States in 1973 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Parlá’s work records his observations of the streets of cities around the world, collecting posters, taking photographs and writings on the wall, turning them into visual diaries he calls cityscapes. Consisting of memories written in calligraphic script layered on fragments of expressionistic and reconstructed city walls, his paintings capture bits and pieces of his encounters. Parlá’s works have appeared in major exhibitions in London, New York, (Bryce Wolkowitz), Los Angeles, (OHWOW) Tokyo, Hong Kong and Paris. His latest projects include a 70-foot-long painting at the Barclays Center, home of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, a mural painting commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the new BAM FISHER Theatre in Brooklyn, the Parlá Frères exhibition with his brother Rey Parlá at the renowned COLETTE in Paris, and an exhibition at SCAD MUSEUM in Savannah, Georgia with fellow alumni Wendy White entitled Performing Painting. Parlá’s 2013 upcoming solo exhibition will be held in the London’s Haunch of Venison gallery.
