José Parlá at the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms

New York based artist José Parlá will be showing in a much anticipated first solo show in London at the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms from this Friday. Entitled Adaptation/Translation, it will include a new body of work, intriguing installations and museum-scale site specific new paintings.

Born in Miami in 1973, José Parlá moved to Puerto Rico at an early age and then settled in Brooklyn; as a result, his relationship with the cities he has been living in has enormously influenced his work.

By drawing inspiration from the urban landscape and the energy which feeds him, José Parlá creates a visual narrative of his experiences in different cities. Through the multilayered, calligraphic nature of his work he embeds these stories in his paintings and invites the viewer to discover his vision of the urban environment.

He began working with aerosol paints on different surfaces of city walls, which have since become the basis of his paintings, together with the use of found objects, symbols of the city’s essence, processed and reworked to find the exact shades of mould, rust or deterioration that are right for the composition.

Part of subways, and old newspapers are painstakingly added to recreate the very same textures and pulse of the cities through which the artist has moved since his childhood, in a creative process that can last for months. José Parlá’s pictures are personal ‘memory documents’, but at the same time they are realistic images of the way that urban decay witnesses a collective memory and history.

Elms Lester Painting Rooms will publish an 80-page limited edition catalogue to accompany the exhibition, fully illustrated and with an essay by curator Michael Betancourt.

© José Parlá, courtesy of Elms Lesters Painting Rooms, www.elmslesters.co.uk

Adaptation/Translation
Elms Lesters Painting Rooms
1 – 3 – 5 Flitcroft Street
WC2H 8DH

Tuesday to Saturday 12 – 6pm, Thursdays until 8pm