Joseph Parra USA, b. 1990
40 x 30 in
Brooklyn-based painter Joseph Parra examines how desire is shaped by digital culture, fusing traditional painterly discipline with the visual logic of contemporary image-making. His canvases are built from squeezed acrylic, applied directly from the tube to create pixel-like surfaces where muscular male forms emerge against vast skies. At once sculptural and surreal, these bodies hover between the sensual and the mediated, inviting reflection on how intimacy and representation are refracted through screens.
Parra’s practice thrives on this duality: the tactility of paint versus the flatness of the digital image, the timeless presence of the human figure versus its translation into code and surface. His works are less depictions than provocations, asking how we see, and how desire itself is constructed, in an era saturated with imagery.
Born in 1990, Parra holds an MFA from Hunter College, New York, and a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2014 and has exhibited widely in the U.S., with recent solo shows at Montclair State University and ASHES/ASHES, New York. His practice has been supported by numerous residencies, including the Vermont Studio Center, Offshore Residency, and the International School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture in Italy. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, YoungArts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
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Butt, 2025Canvas over panel101.6 x 76.2 cm
40 x 30 in -
Cowboy , 2025Canvas over panel76.2 x 61 cm
30 x 24 in -
Cowboy 2, 2025Canvas over panel76.2 x 61 cm
30 x 24 in -
Golden Shower, 2025Acrylic squeezed from paint tubes on canvas over panel152.4 x 121.9 cm
60 x 48 in -
Daydream, 2024Acrylic squeezed from paint tubes on linen over panel152.4 x 121.9 cm
60 x 48 in -
Curtain Call (for Joey Stefano) , 2023Acrylic on canvas190.5 x 152.4 cm
75 x 60 in -
Muscled and Tanned, 2023Acrylic squeezed from paint tubes on canvas over panel152.4 x 121.9 cm
60 x 48 in -
Starlight (Blue-Green), 2023Acrylic squeezed from paint tubes on panel76.2 x 86.4 cm
30 x 34 in -
Starlight (Red-Violet), 2023Acrylic squeezed from paint tubes on panel76.2 x 61 cm
30 x 24 in -
Spectors of Paul Rudolph Cruise the Mineshaft, 2022Acrylic squeezed from paint tubes on canvas152.4 x 121.9 cm
60 x 48 in -
Untitled (Clone), 2022Acrylic squeezed from paint tubes on canvas190.5 x 152.4 cm
75 x 60 in -
Untitled (Mirage), 2022Acrylic squeezed from paint tubes on canvas over panel81.3 x 61 cm
32 x 24 in -
Bulge, 2020Acrylic squeezed from paint tubes on canvas over panel76.2 x 61 cm
30 x 24 in
