In the American art scene of the 1970s and 1980s, Land Art, Minimal Art and Conceptual Art dominated the artistic debate and gave rise to new art forms such as Performance and Video Art. Steven Parrino, born in New York in 1958, began his training in this environment. He studied at Farmingdale State College and Parsons The New School for Design, graduating in 1982. But instead of following current movements, he searched for an own artistic position and found it, contrary to the trend, in the revival of painting. Looking back on this initial phase, he wrote in 2003: "When I started making paintings, the word on painting was PAINTING IS DEAD. I saw this as an interesting place for painting . death can be refreshing ." (Steven Parrino, The No Texts, 2003, p. 43). In the years that followed, until his early death in a motorcycle accident in 2005, a complex, highly individual body of work was created based on this idea. Among his achievements, his oeuvre includes the "misshaped canvases", which are probably his best-known works. These canvases are cut, folded, torn or ripped from the frame and painted in the ever same colors blue, silver, black, red or orange. Comparisons with the works of Lucio Fontana or the folded paintings of Piero Manzoni are just as self-evident as influences from the work of Donald Judd or Frank Stella. With his works, Steven Parrino joined a tendency of 20th century art that put focus on questions regarding the limits of the image carrier in painting and on the quest for a new meaning of a medium with such a rich tradition.

In his work "BLOB 3" from 1994, we can see clear references to Kazimir Malevich's "Black Square" from 1915, a key work of abstract painting and a reference point for numerous artistic positions to this day. In the destructive approach so typical of Steven Parrino, however, the black square is detached from the frame, folded up, cut and then remounted on the stretcher as a chaotic, three-dimensional structure, covered with a layer of transparent silicone. One aspect that clearly distinguishes Steven Parrino's work from other artistic positions of his time is his mix of artistic traditions with models from American punk, pop and subculture. These influences can often be seen in the titles of his works. However, they cannot always be clearly deciphered and put the viewer's knowledge to the test. For example, the title of the Blob series could be a reference to a series of 1980s horror films in which a gelatinous substance from outer space feeds on human flesh on Earth. The cuts in the canvas can also be understood as injuries that are closed and healed by the silicone, potentially also a reference to Steven Parrino's eventful biography. The list of assumed or actual models or interpretations can certainly be continued, even if they are rarely recognizable in the his abstract, reduced works. Time and again, he succeeds in translating the most diverse influences into his own artistic language and his unconventional view of painting. Or as the author Jerry Saltz put it: "He vividly demonstrates that no matter what you do to a canvas - slash, gouge, twist or mutilate it - you can't actually kill it. Painting lives, and so, for the moment, does Parrino's work." (Jerry Saltz, The Wild One, New York Magazine, 2007). With his painting, Steven Parrion gave American counterculture a voice that survived his death in works such as "Blob #3". [AR]