Time Sensitive - José Parlá on Coming Back to Life Through Art

José Parlá on Coming Back to Life Through Art

07/26/23 • 74 min

Through his abstract paintings, the Miami-born, Brooklyn-based artist José Parlá explores themes ranging from memory, gesture, and layering, to movement, dance, and hip-hop culture, to codes, mapping, and mark-making. Coming up in Miami in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Parlá spent his adolescence and young adult years steeped in hip-hop culture and an underground scene that involved break dancing, writing rhymes, and making aerosol art. The art form still manifests, in wholly original ways, in his abstract works, which, while decidedly of the 21st century, extend in meaning and method back to ancient wall writings and cave drawings.

On the episode, Parlá talks about his recent near-death experience with Covid-19; his activism with the collective Wide Awakes; and how his large-scale murals at locations including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Barclays Center, and One World Trade Center trace back to his early days of painting elaborate wall works with aerosol.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[07:37] Rey Parlá

[11:45] Ciclos: Blooms of Mold

[12:19] Augustin Parlá

[13:13] Curtiss School of Aviation

[14:05] José Martí

[16:20] “Phosphene” series

[18:27] “Polarities” series

[18:32] “Breathing” series

[23:25] Wide Awakes

[23:26] For Freedoms

[23:29] Hank Willis Thomas

[23:31] J.R.

[23:35] Wildcat Ebony Brown

[24:28] “The Awakening”

[32:04] “It’s Yours”

[34:17] Snøhetta

[34:45] Ghetto Gastro

[36:50] Craig Dykers

[36:55] José Parlá’s Studio

[38:20] James B. Hunt Jr. Library

[38:22] “Nature of Language”

[38:47] Far Rockaway Writer’s Library

[56:56] “Brothers Back to Back”

[59:51] “Parlá Frères”

[01:00:03] Hurricane Andrew

[01:00:12] Savannah College of Art and Design

[01:01:32] New World School of the Arts

[01:01:51] Mel Alexenberg

[01:02:29] “Combine” by Robert Rauschenberg

[01:06:29] “Gesture Performing Dance, Dance Performing Gesture” at BAM

[01:06:30] Barclays Center mural

[01:06:32] “One: Union of the Senses” at One World Trade Center

[01:06:33] “Amistad América” at the University of Texas at Austin

[01:12:08] Gordon Parks fellowship

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[07:37] Rey Parlá

[11:45] Ciclos: Blooms of Mold

[12:19] Augustin Parlá

[13:13] Curtiss School of Aviation

[14:05] José Martí

[16:20] “Phosphene” series

[18:27] “Polarities” series

[18:32] “Breathing” series

[23:25] Wide Awakes

[23:26] For Freedoms

[23:29] Hank Willis Thomas

[23:31] J.R.

[23:35] Wildcat Ebony Brown

[24:28] “The Awakening”

[32:04] “It’s Yours”

[34:17] Snøhetta

[34:45] Ghetto Gastro

[36:50] Craig Dykers

[36:55] José Parlá’s Studio

[38:20] James B. Hunt Jr. Library

[38:22] “Nature of Language”

[38:47] Far Rockaway Writer’s Library

[56:56] “Brothers Back to Back”

[59:51] “Parlá Frères”

[01:00:03] Hurricane Andrew

[01:00:12] Savannah College of Art and Design

[01:01:32] New World School of the Arts

[01:01:51] Mel Alexenberg

[01:02:29] “Combine” by Robert Rauschenberg

[01:06:29] “Gesture Performing Dance, Dance Performing Gesture” at BAM

[01:06:30] Barclays Center mural

[01:06:32] “One: Union of the Senses” at One World Trade Center

[01:06:33] “Amistad América” at the University of Texas at Austin

[01:12:08] Gordon Parks fellowship

Previous Episode

Tom Dixon on Designing With Longevity in Mind

The renegade British designer Tom Dixon has long had a roving obsession with raw materials—everything from cast iron, steel, and copper; to clay, glass, and stone; to felt, plastic, and marble; to, more recently, cork and aluminum. Entirely self-trained and without any formal design education, Dixon emerged in the design sphere in the 1980s by creating unusual welded salvage furniture that was at once antique, experimental, beautiful, and punk in spirit. Never short of bold, forward-looking ideas, Dixon works from a materials-first perspective. Over the years, he has created an industrial chair with upholstery inspired by the rubber inner tubing of car tires, furniture made of flame-cut steel, and even conceptual pieces grown underwater and built of Biorock. Central to all that he does is a quest for longevity and, in turn, sustainability; he has even, in the past, toyed with the idea of a thousand-year guarantee.

On the episode, Dixon talks about how two motorbike accidents transformed his life, his days in the early 1980s as a bass player in the disco-funk band Funkapolitan, why he considers cork a “wonder material,” and the parallels he sees between his design creations and those of a baker.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[00:56] Tom Dixon

[07:02] Flame-Cut Furniture

[11:27] Design Miami

[12:06] Craig Robins

[13:50] Wolf Hilbertz

[31:14] S-Chair

[34:41] Giulio Cappellini

[35:12] Marc Newson

[35:15] Jasper Morrison

[38:56] Isamu Noguchi

[38:56] Akari Light Sculptures

[39:57] Constantin Brâncuși

[40:33] Dixonary

[46:34] Funkapolitan

[49:16] Funkapolitan’s “If Only”

[49:17] Funkapolitan’s “In the Crime of Life”

[50:17] August Darnell

[53:56] Guy Pratt

[53:58] Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt

[54:50] Creative Salvage

[01:01:06] IKEA

[01:03:37] Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec

[01:03:50] Enzo Mari

[01:03:51] Achille Castiglioni

[01:03:52] Verner Panton

Next Episode

Robert Wilson on the Wonder to Be Found in Time, Space, and Light

For each and every performance the theater director, playwright, choreographer, and sound and lighting designer Robert Wilson creates, time isn’t just of the essence—it is the essence. Perhaps best known as the director of the four-act opera Einstein on the Beach, which he composed with Philip Glass and debuted in 1976, Wilson now has nearly 200 stage productions to his name. These include Dorian, which premiered last year in Düsseldorf, and The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, which opened at the Manchester International Festival in 2011. What stands out about Wilson’s work, among many things, is its rare ability to disorient viewers while also enchanting them. Duration is often another part of the equation: Some of the performances on Wilson’s résumé have ranged from seven hours to an astonishing seven days. Many critics, writers, and scholars have agreed that Wilson has completely reshaped the landscape of theater, vastly expanding its vocabularies and horizons.

On this episode, Wilson talks about his personal philosophies around silence and sound, the intersections of architecture and theater, and his enduring vision for the Watermill Center.

Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[04:31] The King of Spain

[04:32] The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud

[04:34] Deafman Glance

[04:59] John Cage

[09:02] Madama Butterfly

[13:51] “Time to Think”

[14:34] Marina Abramović

[16:37] The Ring

[16:39] King Lear

[16:41] Einstein on the Beach