The Writing on the Wall
HAT THERE SHOULD be an intersection between graffiti art and abstract painting isn’t as unlikely as it might sound. Urban walls—graffiti’s canvases—are constantly covered and recovered with advertising imagery, posters, signage, and lettering of all kinds. Due to a combination of change, neglect, and decay, these layers coexist and coalesce, resulting in a sort of layered abstraction. The artist José Parlá has taken this accidental phenomenon and given it intentionality. Parlá, who started out as a graffiti tagger, now creates wallsized abstract
