Ben Brown Fine Arts is proud to present Phosphene, an exhibition of recent paintings and works on paper by New York-based Cuban artist José Parlá at our Hong Kong gallery, coinciding with Art Basel Hong Kong 2023. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition at the Hong Kong gallery, following his highly acclaimed Textures of Memory show in 2019 organized by Ben Brown and curator Dieter Buchhart. Phosphene will unveil a poignant new body of work, many executed on an intimate scale, and will form the first part of a comprehensive exhibition that will continue at our London gallery in fall 2023 with further paintings from the series.

Parlá is celebrated for his arrestingly energized paintings and installations that offer an abstract, visceral form of storytelling through layers of mixed media and dynamic calligraphic writing, accessing memory, history, language, and the universality of the human experience. Parlá sees his gestural, instinctual practice of calligraphy as a meditative process to explore his subconscious and interiority, the layers of inscrutable writing imbuing his paintings with both light and depth.