OHWOW

JOSÉ PARLÁ
CHARACTER GESTURES

September 9, 2011 – October 22, 2011 
Opening Reception: Friday, September 9th, 2011 from 6–9 PM

937 North La Cienega Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90069

LOS ANGELES, CA – OHWOW is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by José Parlá, titled Character Gestures, open September 9th through October 22nd, 2011. Comprised of paintings, mono-transfers and installations, this exhibition builds on the artist's earlier work that dealt with the concept of psychogeography and depicted distressed architectural surfaces layered with calligraphic text. While he continues to broach the idea of how we experience urban landscapes and the visual language of mark making, the shift within Character Gestures stems from a deeper engagement with process and abstraction.

The notion of "character" is as much about text, integrity, and specific traits, as it is a literal nod to Parlá's performance, wherein he assumes the role of hypothetical pedestrians who interact with marred city walls, as he creates the work. "Gesture," encompasses the ideas of movement, communication, and demonstration, and is mutually respectful of the artist's accidental and calculated actions when applying medium to surface.

With Parlá's new paintings, as seen in No Return, Here Again (2011), marks mix with textures, bright colors, and media, yet the process is as involved and significant as the visual outcome. Additionally, a large-scale installation fills the central gallery space - the freestanding sculptural translation of classroom memories opens a conversation with the surrounding paintings. In a collection of work on paper, which Parlá refers to as "mono-transfers," he experiments with a form of frottage, documenting his new paintings via the impressions they leave on paper.

Character Gestures exemplifies Parlá's deftness at technical execution; the complexity of layering, combined with erasure, still manages a translucent effect. His fluency in visual communication is mindful of the fact that any emotion or memory that attempts physicality can only serve, in reality, as an abbreviation of its original essence. He mitigates this condition through his poetic and individualized form of aesthetic dialogue, while navigating the art historic doctrine of Abstraction.

José Parlá studied fine arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, and The New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida. His work has appeared in exhibitions in London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney and Paris. Character Gestures is his first solo exhibition at OHWOW, and a catalogue will be published in conjunction with the show. Parlá's monograph, Walls, Diaries, and Paintings (2011), was published by Hatje Cantz for the occasion of his solo exhibition at Bryce Wolkowitz gallery in New York. Parlá currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

For further information, or high resolution images for reproduction, please contact: 
Black Frame / Shayna McClelland smcclelland@framenoir.com or 212 226 2196

www.oh-wow.com

 






José Parlá
No Return, Here Again, 2011 
6 x 6 feet 
Acrylic, ink, collage, enamel, gesso, plaster

José Parlá
Character Gestures, 2011 
8 x 5 feet Diptych 
Acrylic, oil, ink, collage, plaster and polyurethane on wood