PICTAS: Visual Scripts for a Re-Imagined Now by Rey Parla
“Photography is the arrest of time. It’s theft, really—stealing a moment from the river of oblivion and pinning it like a butterfly.”
Throughout my practice—as a artist, photographer, filmmaker, and writer—I have investigated the subtle choreography between perception and process. My exhibitions, from Multiplicities to Intentions, have leaned toward what I call “image-consciousness”: not just what is seen, but how and why the image exists at all. With my latest body of work, PICTAS, I move further into this terrain, inviting performers and viewers alike to activate the photographic moment through a new language of performance.
PICTAS are five-sentence theatrical scripts—short, vivid, staged happenings—based on the ever-growing repository of social photography. In a world of curated candids and filtered fiction, I reverse engineer the image: stealing back the moment and turning it into a performance. Where Sol LeWitt gave us instructions for wall drawings, I offer micro-dramas meant to be performed, filmed, whispered, posted, or simply lived. These are not photographs. They are reenactments of the photograph's lie.
Importantly, this work emerges not in isolation, but in continuity with my prior exhibitions. In EXTREMES, I investigated abstract visual poetry through intuitive processing, haptic touch, and non-linear temporality. Similarly, Multiplicities presented image-making as evidence of time’s passage and the layering of personal identity. INTENTIONS, my Tokyo solo show, reflected on dualities, borderless creation, and the viewer’s role in interpretation. Each of these shows questioned the finality of the image; PICTAS now expands that inquiry by turning images into acts.
Moreover, this new work exists in conversation with art history. It draws upon the spirit of Allan Kaprow’s Happenings—spontaneous, ephemeral events that sought to blur the line between art and life. However, unlike Kaprow, whose performances unfolded in time-based space, PICTAS travel backward through the digital mirror. They are time capsules disguised as screenshots, posted memories performed in reverse. This is not nostalgia, but a poetic manipulation of presence.
As such, PICTAS are performative artifacts. Each script is a standalone dramatic work, tagged and documented by those who choose to enact it. These happenings are minimalist in form yet rich in implication. The goal is not replication, but revelation—offering new truths born from borrowed images. The participants are collaborators; the documentation becomes a second stage; the internet becomes both archive and theater.
PICTAS may also be read aloud, whispered like soliloquies, or memorized and recited in the tradition of oral storytelling and sound performance. They function just as powerfully when voiced in silence, painted into the listener’s mind like a sonic sketch—echoing the poetic impulses of John Cage. In this way, each PICTA transcends the screen and becomes a vehicle for presence. Their brevity allows them to travel effortlessly via text, email, social media, or be collected into zines, e-books, and artist publications.
It is critical to note that this project does not seek to parody contemporary image culture out of cynicism. Rather, it appropriates to awaken. It takes the throwaway and gives it ritual. It turns detritus into design. It is art that is lived, not displayed. This is not a critique of photography; it is a celebration of its power to distort and dream.
Thus, PICTAS represent a return to the body, to the page, to the breath behind the image. They are stories frozen in five sentences, meant to be unfrozen in performance. Like my prior work, they resist categorization—part poem, part performance, part conceptual provocation. The script is yours. The vision is mine.
And yet, their instructions are simple:
Take a picture. Steal it back. Perform the lie.
Tag me. Archive the illusion.
Let the world watch.
#reyparla
@reyparla
Negative Capabilities: Dialogue with Sculpting Time and Form by Rey Parla
In an era dominated by digital ubiquity and fleeting visual culture, Rey Parlá stands as a rare figure, deeply committed to tactile experimentation, interdisciplinary practice, and visual poetry. Navigating fluidly between abstraction, filmmaking, photography, theater, and conceptual art, Parlá consistently rejects boundaries—choosing instead to sculpt and inscribe meaning directly into his chosen materials. His approach recalls the radical legacies of Man Ray, Tony Conrad, and László Moholy-Nagy, artists who similarly disrupted conventional notions of photography and film through hands-on interventions. For Parlá, art is less about documenting reality than about constructing new worlds and modes of perception.
Parlá’s exhibition Intentions (Clear Edition & Gallery, Tokyo) marked a significant chapter in his ongoing dialogue with abstraction. Rather than using photography to capture the external world, Parlá employed photographic negatives and surfaces as autonomous visual objects. Each work became a meditation on form and perception—deliberately removing reference points to external reality, thus echoing the abstract experiments of Moholy-Nagy’s photograms. In Tokyo, viewers confronted images existing purely as orchestrations of light, texture, and gesture. This deliberate ambiguity encouraged individual interpretation and underlined Parlá’s profound commitment to visual openness and multiplicity.
His subsequent exhibition, Multiplicities (Benrubi Gallery, New York), deepened this discourse. Here, Parlá blurred distinctions between medium, subject, and object, crafting works resonant with echoes of Stan Brakhage’s meticulously painted film frames and Bridget Riley’s optical abstractions. By manually manipulating negatives—scratching, painting, and altering surfaces—he produced works filled with kinetic energy. These compositions, described aptly as "hybrid self-portraits," addressed questions of identity, perception, and the materiality of the photographic medium itself. Thus, Multiplicities functioned simultaneously as an artistic statement and philosophical inquiry—challenging traditional photographic expectations.
In his exhibition EXTREMES (Benrubi Gallery), Parlá pushed abstraction to a radical edge. Here, the camera was abandoned entirely, as his works employed physical, tactile manipulation of photographic emulsions and unconventional processes to forge luminous, abstract universes. Influenced by Cuban-American painter Carmen Herrera’s geometric austerity and Chilean surrealist Roberto Matta’s cosmic narratives, Parlá’s work inhabited a vibrant borderland between clarity and chaos. Each piece was an evocative meditation, rich with poetic resonance and complexity, effectively aligning him with the avant-garde tradition of optical experimentation exemplified by Tony Conrad’s structural cinema.
Parallel to these photographic experiments, Parlá’s hand-painted films—most notably Sporadic Germination, Rumba Abstracta, and The Revolution of Super 8 Universe: A Self-Portrait—positioned him firmly within the lineage of experimental filmmakers like Stan Brakhage and Len Lye. These works did not simply utilize celluloid; they aggressively reshaped it through painterly and sculptural acts, creating visual symphonies of intense color and texture. Presented at international venues such as The Miami International Film Festival and The Brooklyn Academy of Music, these films established Parlá as a leading voice in contemporary experimental cinema.
However, true to his ethos of adaptation and fluidity, Parlá's practice underwent a significant shift after the global disruptions of 2020. The constraints and introspections prompted by the pandemic catalyzed new forms of collaboration, notably his intensified partnership with his brother, painter José Parlá. Their joint efforts at Parla Studios in New York City fostered innovative approaches to creative strategy, artistic documentation, and storytelling. Co-producing a documentary for PAMM.TV about José's work, Rey re-engaged deeply with the narrative aspects of visual art—bridging his abstract past with emerging, tangible storytelling projects.
Equally transformative was Parlá’s renewed immersion in theater directing at The Barrow Group under the mentorship of renowned directors Seth Barrish and Lee Brock. This intensive return to the human-focused discipline of theatrical storytelling echoed earlier experiences as a young actor at Valencia Community College and Miami Dade College, where his artistic sensibilities were initially ignited by readings of Stella Adler, Richard Boleslavsky, Sanford Meisner, and Constantin Stanislavski. These formative theatrical explorations profoundly informed his conceptual and narrative perspective, bridging his abstract practice with a vibrant, human-centered storytelling approach.
This recent reconnection with narrative structures and character-driven storytelling profoundly informed his latest creative projects: SCORES and PICTAS, now accessible at reyparla.com. In SCORES, Parlá composes open-ended, text-based instructions inviting interpretive freedom. Rooted in the text-art traditions of Lawrence Weiner, Jenny Holzer, and Adrian Piper, these poetic instructions facilitate performative explorations that expand upon his earlier visual experiments. Meanwhile, PICTAS introduces micro-theatrical scripts inspired by appropriated social photography, performed as minimalist happenings echoing Allan Kaprow’s historic art movement of ephemeral performance events. These two new series represent Parlá’s continuous exploration of human connection, narrative, and the boundaries of creative form.
Thus, Rey Parlá’s diverse body of work occupies a crucial space within contemporary art discourse. By transcending traditional photographic and cinematic conventions, Parlá actively participates in the avant-garde lineage of artists who privilege experimentation, tactile intervention, and visual innovation. His dialogue with historical figures like Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy positions him clearly within a tradition of radical artistic inquiry, yet his willingness to embrace narrative storytelling and theater signals a vibrant, contemporary synthesis uniquely his own.
At the heart of Parlá’s art lies the concept of "Negative Capability," a term originally coined by poet John Keats, describing an artist’s capacity to dwell comfortably within uncertainty, contradiction, and ambiguity. It is precisely within these uncertain spaces that Parlá’s creativity flourishes. By sculpting time, material, and meaning, he continually asks audiences—and curators worldwide—to reconsider how we perceive images, narratives, and ourselves.
In an age characterized by rapid change, Rey Parlá’s art is a powerful affirmation of adaptability, experimentation, and resilience. Whether exploring abstract photography, experimental cinema, theater directing, or conceptual projects like SCORES and PICTAS, he remains dedicated to innovation and genuine human engagement. His work is not just a record of artistic evolution; it is an invitation—to see differently, feel deeply, and engage boldly with the transformative power of art itself.
As Parlá continues this remarkable creative journey, curators, critics, and collectors around the world should indeed take notice. His career is not merely a collection of discrete projects but an expansive, living dialogue with time, form, and the infinite potential of negative capability itself—consistently illuminating the profound beauty that emerges from creative uncertainty.