Steven Parrino American, b. 1958

Steven Parrino (1958–2005) was a pioneer in performance and video art, he approached all of his work with a radicalism born from a deep understanding of the history of painting and the avant-garde. Parrino was born in New York and grew up on Long Island. He earned an associate of applied science degree from SUNY Farmingdale in 1979 and a bachelor of fine arts degree from Parsons The New School for Design in 1982. 

In the late 1970s Parrino enacted spontaneous performances, this includes: 'Electirc Guitar' (1979), where he played loud feedback for 15 minutes; 'Disruption' (1982), where he destroyed a TV with a sledgehammer. Parrino had a pessimistic and nihilistic approach to painting, and as a result his practice was associated with a strain of postemodernism called Neo-Geo/ post-conceptual art. Artists such as Parrino part of this movement cristicised the commercialism of the modern world. Within this contecxt, he produced his infamous 'misshaped paintings' as a response to the shaped paintings of the sixties.

Parrino was inspired by the punk scene and countercultures, to such an extent that he embodied their chaotic energy in his practice. Accompanying his punk mentailty was a deep understanding of modernism, semiotics, and minimalist theory, all of which opened the possibilities of painting as object.