Rinos Stefani’s series of Praxeis and installations titled SOLDIERS – TARGETS and HUMAN TARGETS as well as his paintings on the theme of cross-shaped syrtaki DANCERS are the progenitors of his latest RE – AL creations, which turn the green military canvas into a literal battle field, perforated with holes inflicted by a red-hot metal, substitute to a machine gun. The traumatic shots penetrate the material substance of the work itself and the physical and esoteric substance of the white crucified figure, delineated with a bold, gestural expressionism. Hovering between a harsh political and economic reality on the one hand and a utopia on the other, between dignity and humiliation, life and death, the haloed figure, flanked by crosses made of cloth stitches and surrounded by pain and agony schematically cast on the heads of an anonymous populace below, passes from the earthly to the celestial: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama savachthani? “
Dr. Nadia Anaxagorou, Exhibition “RECTO – VERSO: From Byzantium to Modernism”, Evagoras Lanitis Centre, Limassol, 20 March – 8 May 2015.