The Gordon Parks Foundation presents José Parlá: Cuba, the exhibition culminating Parlá’s 2023 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship. The exhibition will be on view from September 18 to November 22, 2024 at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery (located at 48 Wheeler Avenue, Pleasantville, New York). The opening event will be JOSÉ PARLÁ AND RUBEN TOLEDO IN CONVERSATION on September 18, 2024, 6:00pm, at the gallery. [See more information below. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.]
The artist explains, “This exhibition features a series of paintings and photographs created in dialogue with the evocative works of Gordon Parks. His photographs of Cuba, taken for Life magazine in 1958, offer a poignant snapshot of a country on the brink of monumental change. Parks’s ability to capture the textures and contradictions of Cuba’s historic streets resonated deeply with me, inspiring this new body of work. In CUBA, I delve into the complex narrative of a nation caught between the promise of what it might have become and the reality of its ideological struggles. Through my art, I hope to convey not just the visual beauty of Cuba, but also the emotional and historical layers that make it so unique.”
Description: [. . .] Through the language of abstraction, José Parlá interprets the multiplicity of experiences in cities that have served as crossroads in his life, from the most distant geographies to those he identifies as home: Miami, New York, and Havana. Parlá takes his inspiration from the surfaces of buildings and streets, which he considers “an accumulation of information, markers of time much like the lines on the hands and faces of the people who inhabit them.”
The exhibition features paintings and photographs by Parlá created in dialogue with a series of photographs that Gordon Parks took in Cuba while on assignment for Life magazine in 1958. Published in May of that year, just under eight months before Fidel Castro seized power, “A Cuban Way with Styles” highlighted fashion by Cuban-born designers who were gaining popularity in the United States. The article featured non-local, white models, posed in once lavish palaces in Trinidad, some 200 miles from Havana. Parlá was drawn especially to Parks’s palette and his sense of texture and composition, which masterfully echoed the reality and contradictions of Cuba’s historic streets and neighborhoods at the time. Parlá’s new body of work not only testifies to a crumbling ideological system and the oppression it has brought, but also dives deeper into what can be understood solely through experience—the broken promise of what Cuba might have become.
José Parlá has used the language of abstraction as he developed a style of painting to interpret the multiplicity of experiences in cities that have served as crossroads in his life, from the most distant geographies to those he identifies as home. Parlá is known for his large-scale paintings and his community engagement. Among his works are ONE: Union of the Senses in the lobby of One World Trade Center, Manhattan; Diary of Brooklyn, Barclays Center, Brooklyn; the Writer’s Library (collaboration with Snøhetta), Queens; Nature of Language, James B. Hunt Jr. Library, North Carolina State University; and Amistad América, University of Texas at Austin. Parla has had solo exhibitions at, among other venues, Bronx Museum, New York; Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.; Neuberger Museum of Art, Harrison, New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia; and the 2019 Istanbul Biennial. His work is in a number of leading international collections including Pérez Art Museum Miami; The British Museum, London; Buffalo AKG Art Museum; POLA Museum of Art, Hakone, Japan; The Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York; El Espacio, Miami; and The National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba. Parlá lives and works in New York.
Ruben Toledo is a Cuban born artist, fashion critic, author and surrealist wit. Toledo’s work appears in The New Yorker, Vogue, Town & Country, and The New York Times. He created Nordstrom’s national advertising for a decade and illustrated the Louis Vuitton City Guide for two. His work has been exhibited in many museums worldwide including Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, MoMU, Antwerp, and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. His collaboration with his late wife Isabel Toledo, was the subject of a book and museum exhibition at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2009 and has since traveled worldwide. The Toledo Studio was awarded a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in 2005 for their joint works in fashion. Toledo is the author of Style Dictionary and Fashion Almanac as well as illustrating numerous books including Nina Garcia’s fashion book series and most recently Be-Spoke by Marylou Luther.
For more information, visit https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/exhibitions/gordon-parks-foundation-gallery/jose-parla-cuba
[Shown above: José Parlá, “José Del Valle de Aguila Centro Habana,” 2012. Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist. Accessed via https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/exhibitions/gordon-parks-foundation-gallery/jose-parla-cuba.]
The Gordon Parks Foundation presents José Parlá: Cuba, the exhibition culminating Parlá’s 2023 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship. The exhibition will be on view from September 18 to November 22, 2024 at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery (located at 48 Wheeler Avenue, Pleasantville, New York). The opening event will be JOSÉ PARLÁ AND RUBEN TOLEDO IN CONVERSATION on
