Steven Parrino

Steven Parrino (1958-2005), was a New York-based artist and musician known for his monochromatic paintings and a palette mostly limited to black, white, orange, red, blue, and silver, in works that he violently slashed, tore, or twisted off their stretchers, making what he called “Misshaped” paintings. His rough, folded, and cleft surfaces amounted to a purposeful, literal deconstruction of painting. Prior to his untimely death in a motorcycle accident in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Parrino traveled to Tucson on several occasions to visit his friend Olivier Mosset, and developed an appreciation for the city, its environs, and inhabitants. This concentrated, intimate exhibition is homage to the artist’s local legacy and connections, consisting of “Slow Rot” from Mosset’s personal collection, a stretched raw canvas soaked in motor oil, along with five drawings he gave to friends here as gifts. Surprisingly representational, they reveal a less-rigidly polemical, more personal facet to his output, with renderings of sci-fi space babes, hot rods, Elvis, and patterned op-art swirls and vortexes.

Steven Parrino Didactics & Map

Images by Maya Heilman-Hall