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“I think what I am trying to go for in most of my work is that there is a language, visually, that unifies people. A global language that doesn’t look like English, Chinese, Arabic…etc. It’s a universal language. My message is not nationalistic, it is universal. I want people to be understanding of different cultures. I want to spread unity.”
— José ParláUnpacking memories of urban spaces, José Parlá’s enigmatic works lie between the boundary of abstraction and calligraphy. With a distinct focus on rapidly executed mark making, the artist channels the unruly energy of rugged city landscapes onto the canvas, capturing the specific characteristics of the streets and reflecting the passage of time through the physicality of his gestural paintings.
Composed of layers of paint, drawing and found objects and texts, Parlá’s works resemble dilapidated building walls, translating ephemeral qualities of urban life onto his canvases. Utilising cities across the world as blueprints, the artist reflects accumulated memories and cultural histories, documenting the history of our neighbourhoods.
The energy of New York’s dense city life plays out on the surface of Writers' Bench: Grand Concourse & 149th Street, The Bronx, which was exhibited at the artist’s first Institutional solo exhibition at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York in 2020. The series of works exhibited evokes the artist’s personal connection to the Bronx area, encapsulating the neighbourhood’s hip-hop energy and celebrating its historical significance within graffiti and street art culture.
Installation view of the current work at José Parlá: It’s Yours, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, 2020-2021 Straight from the Streets
Conjuring formal elements of gestural painting and graffiti, the rich build-up of surfaces within Parlá’s works resemble city walls, reflecting the marks and traced people leave behind in these rapidly changing neighbourhoods. Citing Urban Realism and Abstract Expressionism as catalysts for his creations, Parlá’s works are rooted in the context of ‘subway art, wall textures, cities, psycho-geography, and abstraction’ i. The title of the current work, Writers' Bench: Grand Concourse & 149th Street, The Bronx, directly references a New York landmark that is a popular meeting spot for graffiti artists across the city, located underground inside the metro station.
The Writers’ Bench at 149th Street-Grand Concourse, New York Working off serendipitous inspiration, Parlá often ventured onto the streets with a map in different cities, ending up in new, strange places that are completely random. He collects photographs and selects artefacts as starting points, whilst adapting visual elements from torn advertisements, or colours and texts from the streets that work for his compositions. From there, layers of paint are added and subtracted, carved and accumulated, piecing together fragments of nostalgia and culminating into visual time-capsules that explore identity, socio-economics and history.
Documenting Urban Histories
Writers' Bench: Grand Concourse & 149th Street, The Bronx is beautifully emblematic of Parlá’s signature abstraction. His unique painterly aesthetic extends beyond gestural painting, allowing the viewer to peel away from their preconceived notions of communication, and instead to step back, contemplate and resonate with the work with an open mind. As the artist explains himself: ‘...think about it with space acting as an entryway. It’s not so direct. It’s an expansive landscape of ideas.’ ii
Detail of the present lot Impossible to absorb at one glance, Writers' Bench: Grand Concourse & 149th Street, The Bronx demands movement from its viewer, compelling them to lean in and move back across its breadth to take in each miniscule detail. Eclectic textures intermingle on the canvas, with layers of intricate text overlapping restlessly above each other, creating not only physical layers but conceptual ones as well, portraying the passage of time, emanating the ambience of a lived-in city. As if plucked straight from the corners of the street, slivers of posters, adverts, and slogans peer through the crevices of the canvas in the current work. Hues of milky whites, burnt oranges and rosy reds dance and bounce off each other like neon lights at a crowded night market, palpating with rhythm.
Left: Cy Twombly, Untitled (Bacchus), 2008
Tate Collection, London
© Cy Twombly Foundation
Right: Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950, 1950
Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York
© 2022 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkRooted in gesture painting and graffiti, Parlá’s compositions evokes the works of Cy Twombly and Jackson Pollock. Parlá’s works build on the visual foundation of a city’s urban environment, intertwining rhythmic linework with painstakingly accumulated layers. Labouring over these surfaces arduously, Parlá develops each layer in his paintings extensively, weaving traces of personal narratives and observations onto the canvas, each stroke of impasto represents a continuous memory.
Collector’s Digest
Primarily known for his large scale murals, José Parlá (b.1973) is a Cuban artist who is based in Brooklyn with a painterly style that is rooted in graffiti and street art, attracting His notable mural projects include ONE: Union of the Senses in the lobby of One World Trade Centre; Nature of Language at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University; and the mural Diary of Brooklyn at the Barclays Centre.
José Parlá’s work in the personal collection of Jay Chou Parlá’s recent exhibitions include: José Parlá: It’s Yours, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2020-2021); José Parlá: Entropies, Gana Art Ninone, Seoul (2020); and José Parlá: Textures of Memory, Ben Brown Fine Arts, Hong Kong (2019).
Garnering international acclaim, Parlá’s works are in the public collections of The British Museum, London; The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; POLA Museum of Art, Hakone, Japan; and The National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba. The artist is represented by Ben Brown Fine Arts.
The artist's gestural creative process
i Sarah Osei, ‘“RANDOM ACTS ARE MY STARTING POINTS;” ARTIST JOSÉ PARLÁ ON CREATING TEXTURES OF MEMORY’, highsnobiety, 2019, online
ii José Parlá, quoted in Ambrose Leung, ‘José Parlá Walks Us Through His “TEXTURES OF MEMORY” Exhibition’, HypeArt, 25 September 2019, online
Provenance
Ben Brown Fine Arts, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present ownerExhibited
New York, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, José Parlá: It’s Yours, 9 September 2020 - 10 January 2021, pp. 28, 68-69 (illustrated)
Literature
Max Lakin, 'José Parlá: Bronx Museum of the Arts', ArtForum, vol. 59, no. 5, March 2021, online (illustrated)
47
Writers' Bench: Grand Concourse & 149th Street, The Bronx
signed, titled and dated '"149th Street & Grand Concourse Writer's Bench" 2020 J Parlá' on the reverse
acrylic, ink, collage, enamel, and oil paint on canvas
153 x 244.3 cm. (60 1/4 x 96 1/8 in.)
Executed in 2020.
Estimate
HK$800,000 - 1,200,000
€97,700-146,000
$103,000-154,000
Sold for HK$1,764,000
Charlotte Raybaud
Specialist, Head of Evening Sale
+852 2318 2026
CharlotteRaybaud@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
Hong Kong Auction 22 June 2022
1
Julie Curtiss
Funky Boots
Estimate HK$600,000 - 800,000
Sold for HK$1,071,000
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2
Jamian Juliano-Villani
Hand's Job
Estimate HK$400,000 - 600,000
Sold for HK$819,000
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3
Lucy Bull
8:50
Estimate HK$1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for HK$11,382,000
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4
Scott Kahn
Soundview
Estimate HK$900,000 - 1,400,000
Sold for HK$4,032,000
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5
Hernan Bas
Who Told Them We Were Coming?
Estimate HK$4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for HK$3,528,000
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6
Shara Hughes
Pleasure House
Estimate HK$3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Sold for HK$6,542,000
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7
Loie Hollowell
Linked Lingam in Red and Blue
Estimate HK$1,800,000 - 2,800,000
Sold for HK$3,024,000
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8
Anna Weyant
Chest
Estimate HK$500,000 - 700,000
Sold for HK$4,158,000
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9
George Condo
Transparent Female Forms
Estimate HK$25,000,000 - 35,000,000
Sold for HK$36,550,000
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10
This lot is no longer available.
11
Matthew Wong
Pink Wave
Estimate HK$16,000,000 - 26,000,000
Sold for HK$22,635,000
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12
David Hockney
Painted Landscape (Or Red and Blue Landscape)
Estimate HK$16,000,000 - 24,000,000
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13
Ed Ruscha
Spied Upon Scene: Window
Estimate HK$3,500,000 - 5,500,000
Sold for HK$3,150,000
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14
Huang Yuxing
Pearl Shore
Estimate HK$1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for HK$3,024,000
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15
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16
Nicolas Party
Two Portraits
Estimate HK$6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for HK$6,542,000
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17
George Condo
The Strangers
Estimate HK$5,000,000 - 6,500,000
Sold for HK$5,670,000
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18
Ernie Barnes
Life After Sundown
Estimate HK$1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for HK$6,048,000
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19
Javier Calleja
1971
Estimate HK$3,500,000 - 5,500,000
Sold for HK$4,032,000
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20
Yoshitomo Nara
Untitled
Estimate HK$6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for HK$7,510,000
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21
This lot is no longer available.
22
Adrian Ghenie
Pie Fight Study 4
Estimate HK$3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for HK$4,032,000
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23
Michaël Borremans
Stars
Estimate HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for HK$2,772,000
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24
Li Chen
Angelic Smile
Estimate HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for HK$4,284,000
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25
Zhang Xiaogang
Bloodline Series - Big Family
Estimate HK$7,500,000 - 10,000,000
Sold for HK$8,115,000
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26
Zhang Enli
Things
Estimate HK$2,200,000 - 4,200,000
Sold for HK$2,520,000
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27
This lot is no longer available.
28
Lee Ufan
From Line No. 790372
Estimate HK$9,000,000 - 14,000,000
Sold for HK$11,140,000
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29
Pierre Soulages
Peinture 102 x 130 cm, 11 mars 2016
Estimate HK$7,500,000 - 10,000,000
Sold for HK$8,115,000
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30
Ouattara Watts
Intercessor
Estimate HK$800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for HK$1,134,000
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31
Sam Francis
Untitled
Estimate HK$1,500,000 - 2,500,000
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32
KAWS
UNTITLED
Estimate HK$3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for HK$3,276,000
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33
Kohei Nawa
PixCell-Deer #21
Estimate HK$2,800,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for HK$3,780,000
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34
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35
Anna Park
I to I
Estimate HK$300,000 - 500,000
Sold for HK$2,268,000
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36
Trey Abdella
Some Things Aren't Worth Waiting For
Estimate HK$600,000 - 900,000
Sold for HK$2,646,000
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37
Szabolcs Bozó
One Bird, A Cat and A Man
Estimate HK$400,000 - 600,000
Sold for HK$882,000
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38
Katherine Bernhardt
Laundry Day
Estimate HK$800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for HK$2,142,000
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39
Issy Wood
Dog With Pendants (Not as Close)
Estimate HK$1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for HK$1,386,000
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40
Robert Nava
Shark Wing Pegasus
Estimate HK$1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for HK$3,780,000
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41
Ayako Rokkaku
Untitled
Estimate HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for HK$8,115,000
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42
Allison Zuckerman
Bullseye
Estimate HK$550,000 - 750,000
Sold for HK$1,071,000
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43
Serge Attukwei Clottey
Valentine's Day
Estimate HK$250,000 - 450,000
Sold for HK$693,000
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44
Genieve Figgis
Pink Ballroom
Estimate HK$1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for HK$2,016,000
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45
Emmanuel Taku
Brothers in Red
Estimate HK$300,000 - 500,000
Sold for HK$1,512,000
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46
Aboudia
Take Me II
Estimate HK$500,000 - 700,000
Sold for HK$2,520,000
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47
José Parlá
Writers' Bench: Grand Concourse & 149th Street, The Bronx
Estimate HK$800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for HK$1,764,000
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48
Edgar Plans
Night Creatures
Estimate HK$1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for HK$3,024,000
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49
Rafa Macarrón
Sin título (Cosmos)
Estimate HK$700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for HK$1,386,000
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