Steven Parrino
(Born 1958; Died 2005)
Steven Parrino was born in New York in 1958. He received his BFA in 1982 from Parsons School of Design, New York. In the late seventies, he began attacking, slashing, tearing, and twisting the canvas, disrupting the traditional Greenbergian celebration of flatness. With an uncompromisingly nihilist attitude, Parrino in many ways mirrored the rebellions of the American punk music scene and subcultures, translating that chaotic spirit in his work. Despite the embrace of chaos, his keen awareness and understanding of modernism, semiotics, and the theoretical texts of minimalists such as Donald Judd and Frank Stella, awoke the possibilities of painting as an object or a real fact. Parrino’s multifarious interests – comic books, hot rods, noise music – are brought together in his practice and oeuvre. Parrino tragically died at the age of 46 in a motorcycle accident in January 2005.
Parrino’s work has been exhibited in museums and exhibitions worldwide: Power Station, Dallas TX, 2017; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland, 2009; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2007; Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2007; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2006; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, 2005–07; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2005; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany, 2005; Le Consortium, Dijon, France, 2004; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2003; Massimo De Carlo Arte Contemporanea, Milan, 2003; Nuremberg Museum, Germany, 2002; Swiss Institute, New York, 2002; Contemporanea, Milan, 2001; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, 2000; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland, 2000.
