“When I saw Rinos Stefani’s paintings many years ago, what impressed me most was the sincerity, which runs through all his work. He still has this effusive directness, which gives his work, power and freshness. He continuously simplifies, keeps what’s important and necessary, the rest disappears. This process requires daring and strong temperament from the part of the artist.

Rinos Stefani is well traveled and many of these “places” are brought into his work. Human figure has been for years the center of his paintings. His lovers, acrobats, dancers move by an inner energy to conquer space and time and they do so with anguish, passion and impetuousness. The paintings of the erotic series brandish intense emotional vibrations, full of eroticism and youthful exuberance. Love without guilt, far from hypocrisies and inhibitions. His visual language comes to a sensual peak and reveals unseen aspects of human experience. He plays with opposites with spontaneity, directness and an unbridled passion. His restless spirit and fertile curiosity turn his images of ordinary things into metaphors of metaphysical phenomena of life and death.”

Text by Andreas Hadjithomas, New Epochi magazine, Summer 2004

The movements of Conceptual Art, Happenings, Performances, Process Art, Earth and site works, Environmental Art etc. arose in Europe and America in the 1960s. In Cyprus, however, until 1990 very few artists had been engaged in these kinds of art.

Rinos Stefani introduced his Praxeis (Actions) in 1990. I started working with him for the first time in Marks on Land, in the Akamas area. We made Earth and site works, using wood, stones, bones and any natural material available. Some of the works were “discovered” by fishermen, shepherds and various “experts”, all of whom confirmed to the Media that they were works done by … Satanists!

From the remote Akamas, Rinos decided to bring his Actions to Nicosia. He filled the Apocalypse Gallery with soil, and on April 10, 1991, he carried out the performance Praxis with Earth. The public’s reactions varied. One “advanced” opinion I remember, was that the artist should have appeared completely naked.

The name “Praxeis”, which Rinos established, was chosen to emphasize the priority of action over theory. Art is not only about statements and theories. On October 27, 1991, he presented the installation Mannequins on Beds at the Tombs of the Kings in Paphos. Another significant Praxis was the happening Maa-Mannequins on July 20, 1992, at Coral Bay beach in Paphos, in which he placed 20 plastic, life-size dolls among the bikini-clad crowd. In a bi-communal exhibition in 1993, he showed the installation Mousetraps at Famagusta Gate, Nicosia, and soon after he took them to the Kyrenia Castle. In July 1993, during a journey to Latin America, he realised the Praxis Osoguaico, in San Agustin, in the Andes of Colombia. Rinos’s most known Praxis is the installation Soldiers-Targets, which was shown at several places Cyprus and abroad, in different versions. In May 1994, during the exhibition of the Pan-Hellenic Art Symposium at Famagusta Gate in Nicosia, three of the Soldiers were stolen. This unprecedented incident fed the media with “polemic” material, and it elicited varied reactions from the Police, the Nicosia Municipality, the Chamber of Fine Arts and others. Only the Ministry of Education and Culture did not react. Among the most tragicomic aspects of this case were the various testimonies that Rinos had to give to the Police. Since then, the “Soldiers-Targets case” remains partly unsolved in the files of the Criminal Investigation Department, under record number Σ/744/94.

In the summer 1998, Rinos and myself in collaboration with other artists, created the big Sphere, out of trash on a shore of Akamas. I remember an incident in which some officers from the Forestry Department asked us to stop immediately “what we were doing” because we didn’t have permission to collect trash. Two years later, the same group of artists, made the installation sea@net, in a different part of Akamas.

In the summer of 2005, Rinos travelled to the Amazon River and realised the Praxis Amazon, in the area where three countries – Colombia, Peru and Brazil – meet.

The above are only some of the documented facts about the different Praxeis by Rinos Stefani. Each Praxis is accompanied by countless details, which perhaps constitute the real, dynamic relationship between the artwork and the public. And this is, I believe, the meaning of Praxeis – the redefinition of the relationship between the work of art and the viewer. Whereas many artists try to explain their work with texts and presentations, Rinos manages to involve the public in his Praxeis. He achieves this because he invents and uses ambiguous images, which are imbued with power, sarcasm and humour. (see Rinos Stefani Charcoal Project https://youtu.be/26sIAOI0mHc)

Text by visual artist Susan Vargas from the book “Rinos Stefani – Acrobats”, 2008

Cyprus Mail, November 1986

Rinos Stefani is challenging the viewing of tradition both in form and theme. His well-laboured thrust creates at best daring combinations of colour attracting and sustaining the eye. Although the artist himself attributes much of his themes to the rural life of his home region, Paphos, he is not offering us static descriptions but dynamic compositions suggesting lyricism on the part of the artist. This young painter is genuinely in search of art in Cyprus.

Glyn Hughes, Cyprus Weekly, 14.11.1986  

The best thing about the paintings by Rinos Stefani is that he knows how to use colour to give spatial structure to his imagery. This is a gift indeed. Even inspired teaching and a real understanding of post cubist art cannot fully give the young artist that ability. You have it or you haven’t.  Rinos has, in abundance. His paintings always have that rich and varied, yet fully coherent surface tension which comes of hours of working out through intuitive means, the right size, shape and intensity for a vigorous yet highly sensitive palette. Rinos was about sixteen when we had the coup and invasion and it is totally understandable that images of that time permeate his work. He has a master in ‘anguish’.

Glyn Hughes, Cyprus Weekly, 10.4.1987

When somebody who can use colour wrapped in spatial strength applies his talent to a fairly straightforward rendering of a landscape, the result is a reminder that the development of the Cyprus landscape is on the move again. Rinos Stefani is one of the most assured of the young painters with a firm grasp of cubism and a vigorous and sensuous attack with pigment. He is also able to apply symbolism connected with today which gives promise of even further developments. Rinos Stefani gives the Cyprus art scene a much needed contemporary persuation.

Glyn Hughes, Cyprus Weekly, 13.5.1988

Rinos Stefani is certainly one of our best young artists. His work always stands out in mixed shows. Solidly constructed and painted with sensual colour his thorough training gives him enough aesthetic ballast to take leaps into adventurous forms and subjects. Whatever his subject, his pictures have an internal truth. His landscapes are especially worth observing.  There is a new generation of artists who are looking at the Cyprus landscape with contemporary perceptions and Rinos Stefani is one of them.

The Cyprus Weekly 22  – 28 Απριλίου 1994, του Glyn Hughes (μετάφραση από τα αγγλικά)

Κάθοδος στον Ακάμα: Το 1991 μια ομάδα Πάφιων καλλιτεχνών ξεκίνησε την καλλιτεχνική ομάδα “Κάθοδος” και παρουσίασαν το έργο τους στους Τάφους των Βασιλέων. Αυτή την άνοιξη προετοιμάζουν ένα καινούργιο πρότζεκτ στην περιοχή του Ακάμα με τον τίτλο «Οικοτοπία» επιδιώκοντας να εκμεταλλευτούν τις δυνατότητες δημιουργίας έργων τέχνης με τη φύση. Θα ξεκινήσουν από την Ακτή του Αχαιών στην περιοχή Μάας και θα καταλήξουν στον Άγιο Γεώργιο της Πέγειας την Κυριακή 24 Απριλίου, 6 μμ.

Ο Ρήνος Στεφανή θα οργανώνει μια νέα «Πράξη», όπως ο ίδιος αποκαλεί τα δρώμενα του. Παρακινημένος από την προειδοποιητική πινακίδα της περιοχής του Ακάμα “Κίνδυνος, μην αγγίζετε» και τους στρατιωτικούς στόχους, δημιούργησε έναν στρατό με πανομοιότυπους Στρατιώτες – Στόχους και τους παράταξε κατά μήκος της ακτής. Το έργο αυτό θυμίζει μια προηγούμενη «Πράξη» του, όταν τοποθέτησε 20 πανομοιότυπες κούκλες – μανεκέν στην παραλία του Κόλπου Κοραλίων μεταξύ των λουομένων τον Ιούλιο του 1992.

Την Σούζαν Βάργκας απασχολεί η έννοια της «Βάρκας» ως αρχετυπικό σύμβολο. Η βάρκα δια μέσου των αιώνων έχει φορτιστεί με διάφορους συμβολισμούς, όπως το όχημα που μεταφέρει την ψυχή στον «άλλο» κόσμο, ως σύμβολο διακίνησης που ενώνει διαφορετικούς πολιτισμούς αλλά και σύμβολο μεταξύ φυσικού και μεταφυσικού.

Glyn Hughes, Cyprus Weekly, 13 – 27.11.1998

The last time there was a European discussion over the work of Rinos Stefani it was in Paris, early summer, when a friend observed – during the height of football fever – a rolling ball of trash collecting full coverage on Euronews.  Most of you will remember that it was Rinos who won the coveted prize for a tapestry during the Power House’s great Scottish event.  That work of Art is now in a Glasgow Museum.

The man who packed the Paphian beaches with mannequins, sent a ball of debris rolling across the same shore and sews a nice hem for an appliqué is also an excellent painter. He is thinkingly and creatively talented enough to put our post modernists into a spin. His more recent work is more abstract but is, if anything, more pigmentally sensuous; even if it is a fish causing consternation on the end of a pier. A bracing, life-enhancing work.

Glyn Hughes, Cyprus Weekly, 19.11.1999, Exhibition Opus Gallery

The most important aspect of this work is that Rinos is not afraid to express his artist’s roots. These are surely in cubism and human concern. Steeped in the great art movements of this century and with an aesthetic eye of his own he can afford to play with forms whichever way he likes. As is obvious in this life enhancing show he uses his considerable imagination and grasp of a larger palette than is usually seen here to produce works of considerable excellence marked by his own individual talent. The superb selection of high-wire figurations are full of tension. Nice, too, to see Eros used frontally.

Paul Butler, Art professor, Byam Shaw School of Art, 1983

But then Rinos Stefani has what the English call ‘the courage of his convictions’. What gives his work its real quality is his ability to reinvent – he tries to find the vocabulary that does not merely present us with a description. He does not simply invite us to look at the subject – we cannot disregard the picture – as a dynamic and dramatic composition which enhances and adds to our perception of the subject matter. For instance his Uprooting (Graham Hamilton Drawing Prize 1983) is about a particular event, it effects us because it tells us about a specific human tragedy, but at the same time it evokes a deeper response which comes out of a sense of suffering humanity. The picture has ‘depth’ in both senses of the word which is what makes it a work of art.