Steven Parrino

Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan

In good condition. Very slight surface dirt lower left corner at extreme edge, center left at edge and lower right at edge. Faint scratch to silver at fold upper center. Depth 4 1/2 in.
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Paris this summer (24 May - 26 August, 2007) was the venue for a veritable multi-media festival dedicated to the creativity, influences and philosophy of New York artist Steven Parrino, who died in a motorcycle accident - tragically and ironically - on New Year's Day 2005.  The program comprised a retrospective exhibition of the artist's paintings, another  exhibition dedicated to artists who influenced him, and a third which recreated exhibitions he had curated; there were also lectures, concerts and screenings of films by various artists, some projected on the windows of the Palais de Tokyo, the events headquarters.

 

Parrino possessed many talents, in many media.  He was a devotee of the diverse culture of New York's Lower East side in the 1980s, embracing the motorcycle obsessions and anarchic rebelliousness of the Hell's Angels, as well as the irreverent, cacophonous electronic music he performed in several groups.

 

In matters of art, Parrino created work which spanned more than one formal category, in some instances categories generally held to be mutually exclusive.  The series of 'misshapen' canvases, of which the present work is a superb example, simultaneously addresses the conceptual concerns of artists such as Robert Morris, Donald Judd, Frank Stella and Sol LeWitt, as well as commenting on those tendencies with a 'Pop' sensibility.  We stand before a persuasive dialogue about the dividing line between painting and sculpture, object and image.  We also see a Claes Oldenburg-type homage to the sort of drapery - sensuous, velvety, luxurious - that is a standard prop in a Baroque painting, such as frequently forms the background to a noble portrait.  'In the final analysis,' notes Fabrice Stroun, 'Parrino is constantly veering between abstraction and figuration without coming down on one side or the other.'  (Introduction to 'Steven Parrino Retrospective 1981-2004', Palais, Magazine 03, summer 2007, p.21.) When we contemplate all these contradictions crammed into a single work of art, we might recall the brushstroke paintings of Roy Lichtenstein, which caricature gestural abstract expressionists while acknowledging their importance with complete sincerity.  It is instructive to note that the artists who influenced him included conceptualists Acconci, Judd and Smithson, as well as Pop appropriationists Sturtevant and Warhol. 

 

His legacy of projects accomplished included curating exhibitions of work by artists he admired, promoted and collaborated with, including emergent talents like Banks Violette. While his ventures in other creative areas will continue to be celebrated and experienced with delight, surely Parrino's most lasting and significant contribution to modern art, aesthetically and intellectually, will prove to be these draped canvases.