RINOS STEFANI

Rinos Stefani

Niki Loizidi, Professor Emeritus in the History Art, Athens School of Fine Arts, states:

Rinos Stefani draws material from personal childhood memories, adventurous journeys to distant places, from wars and revolutionary uprisings of the past. Judging from the strongly political, social, and historical dimensions of these works, Stefani, both as an artist and as a thinking person, harbors no illusions about the course and development of Cypriot history. It suffices to mention a noteworthy thematic motif (the load bearer) which appears in multiple variations and, through a potent dose of bitterness and sarcasm, conceals a deep yet compellingly revelatory meaning.

Rinos Stefani (born 1958) is a multimedia Cypriot artist who introduced Praxis happenings. His best known Praxis is Human Targets. In 2011 he did the Charcoal Project in the Buffer Zone, Cyprus. He created the On Target and participated in the Eco Art – two major projects of the European Capital of Culture Pafos 2017. Both in his paintings as well as in his Praxis he investigates issues of violence. About Stefani’s Praxis happenings with Targets it has been written that he calls visual semantics into question. He brings out an oxymoron: man aiming at his own image, aiming at himself. His work are acts of exorcism and apotropaic rituals against the curse of human self-destruction. The cruciform Dancer is the most characteristic metaphor of his imagery. Rinos Stefani lives in Tala, Paphos. He studied Art at Kingsway Princeton College and Byam Shaw School of Art, London (1978–1984). He lived in Berlin and Barcelona (1985 – 1989). In 1983 he was awarded the Graham Hamilton Drawing Prize. In 1995 he received the 2nd prize at the competition for a public monument in Ledra street, Nicosia and in 1997 the 1st prize at the competition Keeping Glasgow in Stitches – Cyprus, organized by the British Council and NIMAC. His work has been shown in numerous museums and international exhibitions including Beijing Biennale China, Mediterranean Art Biennale Tunis and the Gallerie Inge Baecker, Bad Munstereifel, Germany. He uses a variety of media, including installations, painting and drawing.

2026

The Man who carries holes

In the section “Perforated”, there is a composition where the bearer is depicted lifting a bunch of grenades with his hands and in another composition in the same section the bearer has as a painful burden a sack of…holes! “The Man who carries holes”. The means of attack or building materials carried by the previous figures have been transformed into sacks riddled with holes which – judging by the strained posture of the porters – must be very… heavy! The artist pierced the surface of the canvas – made of old military material – with a red-hot iron bar, or even a piece of burning wood. Stefani seems to suspect that it is wrong to underestimate these mysterious openings into the void that we call perforations, or more plainly, holes. They exist in the Universe – horrifying, chaotic, and unexplained. They exist in Nature, in History, in human affairs, and above all, in the human mind. The theme of the “Perforated” is, in a way, the reverse version of the 1994 series of his “Human Targets”. In the work of Rinos Stefani, the Dancer is the dominant, almost ever-present theme. He is standing upright; arms wide open with deep roots in the ancient past. Stefani’s Dancer is a timeless symbol that encapsulates the great passions that have deeply marked the island’s History.”