Emilie Ortolan: What does the title ENGRAMS mean to you?
José Parlá: Engrams, or ‘memory traces,’ are the physical units of cognitive information imprinted within our neural circuitry. Working from memory is not about a static archive but a dynamic process of creation and reactivation. The works in this exhibition are like internal neural paintings; personal reconstructions of remembered moments.
This exhibition also represents the first iteration of a broader investigation titled ENGRAMS which as an acronym is: Exploring Neighborhoods, Gestures Recording Archived Memory Spaces. This research is currently being developed during my residency at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute where I am this year’s Alan Kanzer Artist Resident, and continue to explore the dialogue between art and neuroscience.
EO: How did you approach the landscapes in this series differently from traditional landscape painting?
JP: Historically, master painters returned to the same landscape daily, documenting the shifting subtleties of light through direct observation. For this series, rather than relying on repeated exposure, I chose to experience a landscape only once, subsequently beginning a series of paintings informed exclusively by the act of remembering. As a result, each time I tapped into the memory of the site, the image stretched, reconfigured, and transformed.
EO: How do memory and neuroscience influence your process?
JP: I am captivated by the intersection of landscapes and mind-scapes. My process begins with an intuitive, painterly inscription born from the exercise of remembrance. This is followed by a heightened awareness of the neural tracing of engrams; while processing the image through memory, I incorporate -through painterly tracing- the biological reactivation of memory to guide my embodied approach to the canvas.
EO: Which places informed the works in this exhibition?
JP: For these painting studies, I drew from three landscapes: the radiant, expansive sunsets of Havana, Cuba; the dense, immersive greenery of the forests in Hakone, Japan; and the subterranean energy of New York City’s urban corridors. Through every mark, gesture, and translucent layer, I seek to inscribe memory. Each brushstroke is a recording of an experience, one intentionally altered by the shape-shifting nature of memory as it is carved onto the canvas.
EO: How do material and technique help express these ideas of memory and time?
JP: Through techniques of transparency, dry-brushing, and collage, I evoke the layered imprints of time. As an artist and a survivor, I channel my own journey into these spaces, imprinting marks that live simultaneously in my body, the many cities I transit, and my canvases. In this show, the works are deeply abstract: interior mind-scapes that act as vessels for the past and transform into imagery of the future. By activating the same memory repeatedly, the accuracy of the image progressively starts dissolving, allowing doors of genuine imagination to swing open.”
