Press Release, September 2014
The gallery Inge Baecker in Bad Munster Eifel, Germany, presents the work of Cypriot visual artist Rinos Stefani, from September 14 to November 16, 2014. In the same exhibition is also shown the work of two well known artists, Serhat Kiraz,Turkey and Tammam Azzam ,Syria. 
Inge Baecker, owner of the gallery, is a prominent art historian and curator who cooperated with many artists from the historic Fluxus group of the 60’s and 70’s. The gallery started in 1970 in Bochum and later moved to Cologne. Her first show was the work of Wolf Vostell and she has exhibited many internationally known artists such as Allan Kaprow, Michael Klerman, Al Hansen, Geoffrey Hendricks, Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, Milan Knizak, Phil Corner, Sakir Gökcebag , Endre Tot, John Cage, Ulrike Rosenbach and others. Inge Baecker has curated major exhibitions and cooperated with art movements and artists in Germany and other countries. ( www.galerie-baecker.de )
In the last 15 years Rinos Stefani produced his most prolific body of distinctive painting series, the Erotic, the Acrobats and the Dancers. Dr Antonis Danos writes that “there is a continuous exploration and negotiation of the human condition: of erotic, existential or ecological anxieties. All these are manifested in a mood of ambivalence, comical as much as tragic, with a sense of humour, sympathy or caustic critique, as well as in a prevalent sensuality”. His latest work titled Exographies includes ink drawings as well as large paintings in which the palette has been reduced to almost black and white. While he still uses acrobats and cruciform dancers and other familiar symbols from his previous work such as fountains, masks, saws, tree trunks, tables etc, he develops a new iconography and a new approach to drawing. One of the most characteristic new images he often uses is the odd looking crowds, masses of people or anthropoids. This represents a further step in the development of his work.
From the 90’s onward Stefani, besides painting has presented together with Susan Vargas what he calls ‘Praxeis’ which were either performance art or interventions – installations in public spaces. These “Praxeis” were nevertheless imbued with similar conceptual intent which is encountered in his painting. From his first performance “Praxeis with Earth” in 1999 in Nicosia to the performance of 2011 “Charcoal Project” in the buffer zone of Pyrgos-Limnitis, his painting, performances and Praxeis have developed in an organic and coherent unity. This we can especially see it in his recent Praxeis and Installations with charcoal and his “Exographies” which he presented in the Gallery Gloria, Nicosia, in May 2012. The works that Rinos Stefani is showing in Germany is related to this body of work.
