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Lot Essay
"At a time when painting was declared dead in some circles, Parrino developed necrophiliac affection for the genre's corpse." (E. Scharrer, "Steven Parrino: Musee D'Art Moderne et Contemporain," ArtForum, September 2006).
Parrino's process, the act of re-envisioning the figure-ground relationship and indeed the whole grand arc of painting is an act of calculated violence. The artist works by never destroying, only desperately trying to see what lies beyond that first realized plane of canvas. We see it in the subject work as real recognition of process, taking the paint out of the formal and realized temporal context and rotating it into a more modern space and sensibility. In his work, out of time can be construed to also mean timeless. Parrino hacks apart these paintings to then present to us the jumbled ecstatic result. "By thus violating his painting surfaces, Parrino adds a conceptual twist to the purity of the monochrome, infusing the work with a sensual suggestiveness." (S. Harris, "Steven Parrino at John Gibson," Art in America, April 1995). This love of painting and of the formal discovery is apparent when you consider the subject work.
Parrino's process, the act of re-envisioning the figure-ground relationship and indeed the whole grand arc of painting is an act of calculated violence. The artist works by never destroying, only desperately trying to see what lies beyond that first realized plane of canvas. We see it in the subject work as real recognition of process, taking the paint out of the formal and realized temporal context and rotating it into a more modern space and sensibility. In his work, out of time can be construed to also mean timeless. Parrino hacks apart these paintings to then present to us the jumbled ecstatic result. "By thus violating his painting surfaces, Parrino adds a conceptual twist to the purity of the monochrome, infusing the work with a sensual suggestiveness." (S. Harris, "Steven Parrino at John Gibson," Art in America, April 1995). This love of painting and of the formal discovery is apparent when you consider the subject work.