Jose Parla - Adaptation/Translation

Brooklyn based artist Jose Parla will be showing in a spectacular and much anticipated first solo show in London at the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms.

Born in Miami in 1973, Parla then moved to Puerto Rico. After being raised in the Caribbean island by his Cuban parents, Parla returned to Miami at the age of nine where he began painting and remained there until being awarded,a scholarship to Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia.

In Adaptation / Translation, Parla further explores the wanderings of urban populations to translate these personal experiences and make visible manifestations of what lies beneath our surfaces. By drawing inspiration from the urban landscape, the energy and memory which feeds him, Jose Parla creates a visual narrative of his experiences in different cities. Through the multilayered, psycho-geographical, calligraphic nature of his work he embeds these stories in his paintings and invites the viewer to discover his vision of the environment.

Parla is therefore not just a painter, but a new kind of novelist; a modern storyteller who uses wall gestures, the writing on the wall, and found advertisings to reconstruct complex stories and anatomies.

Jose Parla began painting under the name Ease in 1983 on city walls, and while painting in the tradition of New York subway art, he also was experimenting on canvas with the desire to translate the decaying environment of derelict places which later inspired his cityscapes aesthetic and continues to inform his work today.

Parla’s paintings reveal a silent message of time and history spoken through the walls of the worlds cities; a landscape which speaks of deterioration, neglect, and abandonment. The results, whilst beautiful, with their multicolours and hidden memories, are significant in that they reflect some of the darker aspects of our civilization.

Elms Lesters Painting Rooms
1-3-5 Filthcroft Street
London WC2H 8DH

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