Rey Parlá
Colorful Thought, 0000
50 x 40 x 2.25D"
Chance by Choice Recalculated, 0000
50 x 40 x 2.25D"
Definition Unclear, 0000
50 x 40 x 2.25D"
Dispersion of Time Texture, 0000
50 x 40 x 2.25D"
Dream Object, 0000
50 x 40 x 2.25D"
Open-Ended Variations of Unity, 0000
50 x 40 x 2.25D"
Concrete Freeze Frame, 0000
24 x 18 x 2.25D"
Real Instantaneous Perceptive Design, 0000
50 x 40 x 2.25D"
Common Denominator, 0000
24 x 18 x 2.25D"
Untitled (Join Me & The Haptic Light), MMXX
Precise Color Projection, 0000
50 x 40 x 2.25D"
Elusive Horizons, 0000
24 x 18 x 2.25D"
Random Wave, 2016
Unbounded Hermetic Light, 0000
50 x 40 x 2.25D"
Illusionistic Interferences, 2012
HYPER / SCRATCH GRAPH, 2012
The World of Space, 2012
Human Dynamical Engaged Movements, 2016
Luminous Clarity, 2016
My SEPIAN DNA, 2016
Interchangeable Response, 2016
Loop Fragment, 2016
Ethereal Charge Series Untitled Feeling, 2023
Human Forest
4 x 6 ft.
Rey Parla is a Cuban American artist born in Miami and raised partly in Puerto Rico and South Florida. Parla studied filmmaking at the Alliance Film and Video Cooperative and earned a B.A. in English Literature and a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with a Certificate in Film History & Theory from Florida International University.
Rey Parla’s “Scratch-Graph” images have their origin in a series of hand-painted films the artist made in the 1990s. Using motion picture stocks (sometimes with photographed subjects), Parla scratches, paints on, and collages images in a process that physicalizes and gives visual representation to the metamorphic effect of memory. Parla layers and destroys pieces of film which he ultimately processes into unique photographic prints, with intersecting lines that recall microchips as well as urban streetscapes running in counterpoint to amorphous blocks of color. Frenetic but also tightly controlled, these images dialogue with Bridget Riley’s stripe paintings as much as they do with Man Ray’s photographs, with Jean Dubuffet’s all-over technique as well as the abstract films of Stan Brakhage. The manipulation of the pictorial artifact questions the idea of what a photograph is and what it can represent, both of the physical universe and of the viewer’s gaze.
Parla has lectured at Savannah College of Art & Design. His short films and documentaries have screened at several films festivals, and his photography has been featured in Forbes, Brooklyn Rail, the New York Daily News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Champ magazine, and Cultured magazine, and is part of several international private collections, including the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection.
Rey Parla’s “Scratch-Graph” images have their origin in a series of hand-painted films the artist made in the 1990s. Using motion picture stocks (sometimes with photographed subjects), Parla scratches, paints on, and collages images in a process that physicalizes and gives visual representation to the metamorphic effect of memory. Parla layers and destroys pieces of film which he ultimately processes into unique photographic prints, with intersecting lines that recall microchips as well as urban streetscapes running in counterpoint to amorphous blocks of color. Frenetic but also tightly controlled, these images dialogue with Bridget Riley’s stripe paintings as much as they do with Man Ray’s photographs, with Jean Dubuffet’s all-over technique as well as the abstract films of Stan Brakhage. The manipulation of the pictorial artifact questions the idea of what a photograph is and what it can represent, both of the physical universe and of the viewer’s gaze.
Parla has lectured at Savannah College of Art & Design. His short films and documentaries have screened at several films festivals, and his photography has been featured in Forbes, Brooklyn Rail, the New York Daily News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Champ magazine, and Cultured magazine, and is part of several international private collections, including the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection.
