Steven Parrino - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 12, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Rolf Ricke, Cologne

  • Catalogue Essay

    During the 1980s, when painting was considered by some an outmoded medium, many artists embarked on new paths within the art world, in order to find new ways of artistic expression. Different to many of his counterparts, Steven Parrino took a "rebellious" approach to this change and rather than leaving painting behind as a forgotten mode, he began to explore the concept of "The Death of Painting". Parrino remained loyal to the basic principles of painting, yet simultaneously moved away from the orthodox approaches and began to make the medium his own. By combining painted and bare canvases, Parrino would violate his surface by notably mis-stretching it – a technique that was increasingly becoming his signature style.

    Manipulating the canvas into dynamic folds and then fixing it to the stretcher provided his works with a strange "painterly" distortion, appearing as if the canvas was about to drop and fall. Conveying the illusion of his painting being poorly prepared, Parrino plays with his viewers expectations and invites them to look at the painting more closely, only to discover that in fact the canvas has been carefully prepared and constructed. The result is a canvas with overlaps and the folds that resemble a blend of canvas and sculpture. The combination of a painted canvas and the evocative shadows triggered by the folds infuses the work with a three dimensional quality that transforms the wall piece, from a simple painting into a painted relief.

236

Untitled

1990
Acrylic and enamel on canvas.
72 x 48 in. (183 x 122 cm).
Signed and dated “St. Parrino ‘90” on the stretcher.

Estimate
£150,000 - 200,000 

Sold for £228,000

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

Evening Sale
13 October 2007, 4pm
London