The current exhibition Phosphene by New York-based Cuban artist José Parlá references the sensation we experience when we close our eyes and witness a swirling dance of colourful shapes and dots on the inside of our eyelids, caused by light flooding through the thin layer of skin to the retina. Derived from Greek phōs 'light' and phainein 'to show', it is perhaps the closest we can ever come to a visual experience of our inner body, and to Parlá the commonality of this experience represents a kind of universal language - being a sensation everyone living experiences, regardless of culture, colour, sex, or creed. The paintings he has created inspired by this phenomena are particularly poignant in that their conceptual genesis lies in the artist's near-death experience with Covid-19 in 2021, which initiated a four-month coma from which no one was sure he would awaken. As such, Phosphene is a profoundly exhilarating series that explores collective experience, memory and, in a sense, the atomic energy that keeps us alive. The series began while the artist was recovering in Miami, Florida, where he began painting outdoors in the sun kissed beauty of nature, as opposed to his urban studio in Brooklyn. He became obsessed with conveying the abstract visual language forming in his mind due to the sensation of the sun penetrating his retina, and in translating that experience directly to the to canvas - the result being a psychedelic interplay of form that blends the strange calligraphy of optic nerve stimulation with painterly abstraction. Here, the artist, speaks to Culture Collective about the experience of returning to the world from the brink of death, and finds out why he has hope that one day the species will transcend beyond a perpetual state of war and violence.
October 25, 2023
