Brooklyn artist José Parlá sheds chiseled blocks of oil soaked materials in a myriad of colors onto his studio floor. He rescues near-crumbled piles of obsolete statues and lays them out on sawhorse beds to repair or convert them into modern unknowables. His abstract compositions are coaxed into existence to indulge his realized singular world.
A hypnotic version of antiquity was figuratively exacted by Salvador Dali’s Venus de Milo with Drawers in 1936. It is a perfect copy of the infamous alabaster muse save for her body being replaced with drawers that feature white tufted fur pulls. Surrealism adheres to the formalism of whimsy and the abstraction of dream states. Slumbersome states of mind conjure unexpected objects begging for an entrance into rooms they don't belong. We are steeped in designers that take direction from the logic and nature of surreal whimsy by way of cut and color.
Images:
José Parlá, Neon Spring, 2013
José Parlá in Studio, 2016
Salvador Dali, Venus de Milo With Drawers, 1936
Words by Brit Parks
