Steven Parrino, the late multimedia artist (1958–2005), once said, “I came to painting at the time of its death, not [to] breathe its last breath, but to caress its lifelessness.” He set out to revamp the centuries-old practice and began, in the late 1980s, by painting monochrome colors on canvas, removing the frames, twisting the material, then remounting it as a new picture distorted into deeper dimensionality. For his first exhibition in the German-speaking world, a selection of his arresting themes are on display. —E.C.