Jose Parra

More than a painter, José is a true director, one that is able to blend fantasy and the unreal with a realistic verisimilitude.

He tells us stories filled with exquisite scenarios, which takes us to fantasy worlds between the past and the future. A detailed and realistic reenactment of an era, in which the intrusion of surreal elements causes the whole context to lose its balance. A fabulous universe which awakens from the dream as if it was a distant, made-up and revived memory.

In order to majestically describe us a stunning and sumptuous world, his characters obstinately cherish life in an imaginative celebration. The mundane, the banal and the quotidian are turned into a livingness filled with supernatural and fantastic experiences. A distinct and elegant monarchy, one that unfolds itself in bold and seductive stances.

Curiously, sometimes Parra magnificently suggests the collapse of the world that he created; the impending end, as if an empire was about to fall. In something that resembles a shipwreck, entire palaces plunge themselves into a sea where ruins are extended to infinity. Islands, with no more than a few square meters, float in what remains of a room; the last stronghold of a decaying nobility, which, paradoxically, between debris and ruins, still convey the luxury and the arrogance of someone who is unreachable and untouchable. They hide behind masks and erudite, affected demeanours, even when sometimes the demise or the disgrace is already part of the present day. They cultivate a gloating insolence, a trait of a class that tries to ignore such fact, whilst going after a motif to keep the party going.

They joyfully live in a permanent illusion, where it’s pointless to distinguish between the dream, the alienation, the madness and reality.

By Pedro Boaventura • Excerpt from Masters of Painting - Volume 1

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Born in Guadalajara Mexico on 1975, he grew within a family devoted to the reproduction and creation of Spanish and Latin American baroque and religious art; a primary influence on his work, filtered through the dramatic and theatre like sense of the characters as well as some forms of composition.

He became an apprentice at his father studio at the age of 16. After studying and administrative career at Iteso (Jesuit college), he joined the School of Arts at the University of Guadalajara, then Art Student's league in NY and finally the atelier of Carlos Vargas Pons in Guadalajara. His work is deeply influenced by the baroque great masters as well as the magic realism of Remedios Varo and Carrington through Anne Bachelier and the philosophy behind the work of Frederick Hart.

Jose Parra's work has been catalogued and published in books in Mexico, United States and Europe. He's participated in solo and collective shows internationally.

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Jose Parra

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