Rinos Stefani’s The Dancer is an iron sculpture which was made for the project On Target. The Dancer is now situated at the Ivis Maliotou Park in the Paphos’ Municipal Gallery, Cyprus.
ON TARGET – EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE PAFOS 2017
On Target was a major exhibition of the European Capital of Culture, Pafos 2017. The project was curated by the Art historian Inge Baecker and artist Susan Vargas. The exhibition’s theme was about war and violence. Participating artists: Rinos Stefani, Molitor & Kuzmin, Ulrike Rosenbach and Tammam Azzam. The show also featured works by Wolf Vostell.
THE DANCER APPEARS PROMINENT IN RINOS STEFANI’S WORK
Art theorist Antonis Danos wrote: The figure of the Dancer appears prominent in Rinos Stefani’s work. A figure dancing the zeimbekiko, an anthropomorphic bird with half-opened wings, an allusion to crucifixion; a dancer naked, alone or in crowds, “of the red land”, “with bull”, “with saws”, “with mask”, “at a black fountain”, “of the moon”… A tangible figure, symbolic, phantom-like – here, a physical presence, there, a transparent one, and elsewhere a blank space for the inscription of other shapes or forms. Man at the stake of his contradictions. Presence, absence, the artist, the model, I, and the other…Images of a world that is at once familiar and strange or estranged. Like scenes from a play of the theatre of the absurd – the familiar and intimate loom unfamiliar and otherworldly. Images which refer to the
primordial, the primitive, the essential. But also to their extinction or to the severing of our umbilical cord with them. Frozen in time, stills from an ancient ritual, foreign to our times…
RINOS STEFANI’S DANCER IS A REFERENCE TO THE WORLD SITUATION
Inge Baecker wrote: “Stefani’s work is an exciting journey through the ups and downs of world history. His ‘Dancer‘ is not only a symbol of Cyprus but a reference to the world situation; it is an art work that summarises the contradictory elements of the homeric struggle between life and death. In the dramatic movement of this cruciform figure there is a vital spark of hope.
