Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery

JR and José Parlá Show the Wrinkles in Havana at Bryce Wolkowitz

May 15, 2013 Artists

While in New York for his “Inside Out” project, French Street Artist and photographer JR joined with American artist José Parlá to exhibit photos and a couple of new pieces to celebrate their collaborations on walls in Cuba last year. “The Wrinkles of the City, Havana, Cuba” at Bryce Wolkowitz continues in the route of JR’s ongoing photography project documenting people in a given city (Cartagena, Shanghai, LA) who have endured the tests of time and have lines on their face to prove it.

An original piece created for the show by JR and José Parlá for “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Cuban heritage of the Brooklyn painter Parlá may have helped set the stage for a collaborative Street Art project in Havana during its biennale, adding context to the marked and distressed walls that characterize much of this city, whose mottled textures and subtle color washes in turn add character to the artists work. With his hand painted gestural movements and markings surrounding and anchoring JR’s photographic wheat-pastes, Parlá gives hand-hewn florid kineticism to the poignancy of the proud portraits; a powerful example of storytelling on the street.

JR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JJR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR / José Parlá: “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba.” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The same image reprised for New York streets currently by JR and José Parlá. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR / José Parlá: The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba is on view until July 12, 2013 at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery. Click here for further information.

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Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery Presents: JR and José Parlá “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba” (Manhattan, NYC)

May 2, 2013 Afghanistan, Artists

Brooklyn Street Art

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery is pleased to present The Wrinkles of the City, Havana, Cuba, a recent collaboration between JR and José Parlá.

The Wrinkles of the City was started by JR in Cartagena, Spain and has been reprised in Shanghai, Los Angeles, and most recently, Havana. In 2012, JR and Parlá photographed and interviewed dozens of senior citizens who lived through the Cuban revolution, flyposting colossal black-and-white portraits of their subjects on the walls of city buildings. Parlá, who is of Cuban descent, interlaces the images with palimpsestic, calligraphic writings and color. In a city devoid of commercial imagery, JR and Parlá’s enormous yet intimate portraits offer a stunningly humane contrast to the endless repetition of political icons.

This exhibition will consist of twelve large portraits from the Havana iteration of The Wrinkles of the City project along with a site-specific installation.

http://brycewolkowitz.com/h/exhibition_images.php?e=49

José Parlá Writes His Diary on the Wall

March 7, 2011 Artists, Events, Gallery, Manhattan, NYC, Opening

For his current show at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea, José Parlá’s new paintings make you feel as if you were standing on a cold windy elevated Brooklyn subway platform waiting for a hulking rusted behemoth to scrape and scream around the curvature of the tracks toward you.

José Parlá (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Concentrate solely on the canvases in front of you and you might even hear the heroes of the railyards approaching. Like Ginsberg with no rhyme but a lot of reason Mr. Parlá’s poetic abstractions gently draw the viewer in for a close inspection.

“The whole blear world of smoke and twisted steel around my head in a railroad car, and my mind wandering past the rust into futurity: I saw the sun go down in a carnal and primeval world, leaving darkness to cover my railroad train because the other side of the world was waiting for dawn.”
— Allen Ginsberg

Using a color palette of red, ochre, black and gray he mashes the colors with bold textures and exquisite, sinuous lines. Eroded, tattered surfaces and found objects are canvas to markers, aerosol, even charcoal. The gestural markings and strokes recall a hip-hop romance now abstract and calligraphic: some layers evoking a dark Mexican Baroque wooden altar, carved and gold leafed.

Mr. Parlá trained in the 1980s on the streets as a graffiti artist – and all of these elements exist elsewhere in the urban jungle, but Parlá has developed his own language to tell his story with these tools. Born in rebellion, the energy of his movement across the canvas is just as badass as any tunnel writer but with a timbre and depth that age and self-study can render.

At the show opening last Thursday an ad hoc duo of drummers set up shop outside the gallery and an air of raucous carnival and merriment permeated the night. A demanding New Yorker stopped to inquire just how long they would continue. The musicians gently answered her questions and banged away. Walking away from the spot their beats disappeared into the cold night.

“Wall Diaries and Paintings”, José Parlá

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery from March 3rd to April 16th

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