Presenting Parlá – José Parlá’s Hong Kong solo exhibition

Ooi Botos Gallery announces Reading through Seeing, New Works, an exhibit of new paintings, works on paper, and photographs by Brooklyn based artist José Parlá. Running May 14 – July 11, 2009, during the Hong Kong International Art Fair, this will be Parlá’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. The show will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by author and New York University scholar Alexandra Chang…

Aspects of Parlá’s new works recall his unique and playful inscriptions, diary like gestures with his trademark hand-writing used to document his observations of precise study and specific effects of the geographical environment in the urban landscape by the behavior of anonymous individuals on the streets in recent travels to France, Japan, and the UK.

Memories, thoughts, ideas, quotes, phrases, conversations and observations scrawled in a flowing mode reflect Parlá’s characteristic fusion of writing and painting, word and image. His brushwork depicts walls out in the city or rural areas wherever he might be traveling through together with worlds of words that hint to stories within stories and evoke the places he has visited.

José Parlá was born in 1973 in Miami, and studied at The Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia and at The New World School of the Arts in Miami. Following travels in the Caribbean, South America, Asia and Europe, Parlá settled permanently in New York. He has exhibited his work extensively since the early 90s. His work is collected by public and private institutions around the world. Major recent exhibitions include The New Grand Tour showing in Hong Kong and Beijing (2007-08), Adaptation / Translation at Elms Lesters Painting Rooms in London (2008), and Layered Days with the Cristina Grajales gallery in New York City (2008).

For more information on the artist, visit www.joseparla.com