Steven Parrino (b. 1958 – d. 2005)
No Title Painting #4, 2000

A friend asked for my opinion about him. So I had to google him up. And my opinion was good, so he had to be registered.

I appreciate the tickling of the medium boundaries – it presents itself as a painting, but the draping-wrapping of the canvas around the frame makes it sculptural, the painting element appears quite graphical, more reminding of printmaking than painterly gestures. Yet, taken altogether, it is such a gestural piece, it suggest a body – whether body who must have done quite notable gestures to put this together, or the object itself as a bodily presence.

This relates to my endeavour to make ambiguous objects transcending single media and genre conventions (e.g. my “Soundcloud” soft sculpture with sound art album in it), causing the audience to stop and wonder for a while before choosing an appropriate “decoder” for the work, or – ideally – taking an effort to construct one on the go.

And Parrino has also been engaged in noise music and video and has written some texts on art theory that I am not waiting to read.