Steven Parrino

(More information in French)

« Damage is good ! »

In one of the many faxes exchanged between the artist and the CAN in the months
leading up to this exhibition, Steven Parrino keenly stresses one particular point :
« Don’t protect the canvases,’ don’t wrap anything up! ln any event, we’ll chuck everything away after the show ; it’s not worth anything! »
Such exhortations düo not really come as any surprise when one sees the way the artist deals with his works : with frames torn apart, and canvases without stretchers, and even lacerated, the pictures seem to have survived an earthquake or suffered from the wrath of a visitor who is not at all happy.
Steven Parrino as fascination for the « outlaws » of culture, his excessive soft spot for underground comics, blood-and-guts films and punk music crops up in his photomontages, which are haunted by the presence of people as intriguing as Vampirella, Sid Vicious and Kitten Natividad (a muse for Russ Meyer).

Marc-Olivier Wahler translated by Simon Pleasance

Opening May 2 1998
Exhibition from May 3 to July 5 1998