Jannis Varelas by The Breeder

THE BREEDER !

JANNIS VARELAS PORTFOLIO

THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com 1 rue des Lilas, MC 98000, Monaco, t: +377 97987990, monaco@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com

THE BREEDER JANNIS VARELAS Jannis Varelas paintings map a maximalist system that records and shapes the notion of absent-mindedness. Varelas intention is an aesthetic treaty outside of the rational commands of a production process, which is organized as an ensemble of notes, for the final result to be understood as the general imprint of a creative behavior. Jannis Varelas (b. 1977 Greek) lives and works between Athens, Los Angeles and Vienna and is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London (MFA) and the Athens School of Fine Arts (BA). Works by Jannis Varelas are in the Saatchi Collection, London; the Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens; the Zabludowicz Collection, London; the Hort Family Collection, NY, the Onassis Foundation USA., The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. Selected solo shows include: “Monster”, Onassis Cultural Center, Athens (2017), “Black Frames”, special commission for the Onassis Cultural Center New York (2017), “New Flags for a New Country”, The Breeder, Athens (2015); “Sleep My Little Sheep Sleep”, Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati, Ohio, curated by Xenia Kalpaktsoglou (2012); “The Oblong Box”, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens (2011) curated by Marina Fokidis. Selected group shows include: “Fireflies in the Night Take Wing”, curated by Robert Storr, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens (2016); “Ametria”, curated by Roberto Cuoghi, DESTE Foundation and Benaki Museum, Athens (2015); “Paper - works from the Saatchi Collection”, Saatchi Gallery, London (2013); “Hell As Pavillion”, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, curated by Nadja Argyropoulou (2013); “Skin Fruit: Selections from The Dakis Joannou Collection”, curated by Jeff Koons, New Museum, New York (2010); “Lebt und arbeitet in Wien III: Stars in a Plastic Bag”, Kunsthalle Wien, curated by Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Raphaela Platow, Olga Sviblova and Angela Stief (2010); New Orleans Biennial Prospect 1, curated by Dan Cameron, New Orleans (2008); “Destroy Athens”, 1st Athens Biennial, curated by Xenia Kalpaktzoglou, Poka Yio and Augustine Zenakos, Athens (2007). For more information: http://thebreedersystem.com/artists/jannis-varelas-artist-page/ THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com

Introduction to Jannis Varelas Drawing As Currency Gianni Jetzer One of the things that struck me when I first met Jannis Varelas in a New York liquor bar were his tattoos. Not because of their size and presence, but rather their sparse placement and astonishingly enough their sheer invisibility. I had never noticed such tiny ink drawings on someone’s arm before. His tattoos are mere scribbles, as if hastily applied and made to be instantly erased. Their overall surface is negligible, their scaling is completely off––an airliner shrinks to the size of a branch, an UFO matches the sun. Opposed to the more often than not bold iconography of ink and its penchant for eternal truths, the drawings on the artist’s arms showcase the elusiveness of the body and eventually of life itself. The tattooed images do not appear as a shield to keep the outside world at large, but rather as ephemeral marks that create a subcutaneous presence directed to the man behind them. A sun, a moon, a plane, an UFO, or a palm tree, the drawings are made by Varelas himself and do not differ much from the icons you can find on his most recent paintings. Since a couple of years he collects line drawings, the majority of them made by children or teenagers. As Varelas’ mother works with young people with ADD in Greece, there is a familiar source that never dries out. The teens draw extensively in an attempt to communicate. The images are almost automatic in their creation, building up presence around absent minds. Not will power directs the crayon but rather thoughtlessness that leaves marks mirroring the interior worlds of their authors. Some of the drawings were made during psychological tests to measure the grade of attention deficit disorder. They are part of a process of standardization, defining who is healthy and who’s not, who matches the expectations and who’s not. Who’s in and who’s out. To use imagery from the outside of the established art-scene goes a long way back. Paul Klee drew inspiration from children’s drawings. Jean Dubuffet was fascinated by the images of psychiatric hospital patients and extensively collected their art. He even considered them to be more authentic than academic art: “Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses – where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere – are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professionals”.1 Dubuffet’s disconnected vision of outsiders versus insiders got obsolete ever since the French artist tried to legitimized his visual language by writing overly intellectual texts in his attempt to turn Art Brut into high art. When Jean-Michel Basquiat, a self-taught artist, conquered the New York art world with drawings that were deliberately childlike, naïve became a genre. Today there is a younger generation of artists such as Joe Bradley, Michael Williams, André Butzer, Katherine Bernhardt or Jannis Varelas, who make use of an iconography that plays with the raw and unsophisticated as a way to undermine the concept of what art should look like. In times where thousands of artists come out of art schools every

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year and ignorance is in effect impossible, unlearning becomes a form of counter-culture and is at once a fresh perspective. The templates of Jannis Varelas are organized in pattern books for use while painting. Applied to the surface of the canvas the scaling goes the opposite direction than with the tattoos. Instead of minimizing, the scribbles are blown up as if applied by a giant hand in a gestural performance. The artist turns the doodles into large-scale elements. Their importance is increased by size in order to give the ephemeral signs a screen like presence. What previously would be easily overseen is now the focus of attention. The colors in his paintings are bright and joyful. They match the chromatic range of oil crayons that are made for children to play. A further reason for the particular palette could be his relocation to Los Angeles, the exposure to the Californian sun and the saturation of colors there. Jannis Varelas’ compositions are characterized by a dense tissue of signs and symbols. There is almost no blank space to be found. Kenophobia, from Greek “the fear of the Void” is commonly known as horror vacuï in visual art. It is the filling of the entire surface of a space or an artwork with detail. An urge often observed in Outsider Art, where allover compositions create an unmatched intensity. Every square inch of surface is filled with details and data in a compulsive excess of activity—perhaps in fear of that blank space that might stare back. The paintings of Jannis Varelas share an electrifying energy. They forgo any one-point perspective in order to produce a flat vision of multitude rather than concentration, stressing diversity over singularity, equality over privilege. Recently Greece went through dark times. It defaulted on its interest payments to the European community and provoked an unprecedented drama. The country was suddenly at risk to be bumped out the European community. Varelas who was personally affected by these circumstances in his homeland, developed new paintings as a form of protest against the precepts of neo-liberalism with its aim for liberalization and privatization. The core of Varelas work is deeply idealistic. As an inspiration he quotes the American social activist, anti-war leader, and counterculture icon Jerry Rubin, who once famously said: “(…) people should have better means of exchange than property or money, that there should be some other basis for human interaction.”2 The currency that Jannis Varelas offers are paintings made of line drawings that are for their part borrowed from troubled kids. His paintings function as a lingua franca between generations. They overcome questions of origin, power or social status in order to create common patterns for identification. Highly inclusive by nature they groom a way for societies to come that recognize Outsiders as valuable members of society. -text by Gianni Jetzer, curator at large, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington !

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Jannis Varelas, Black Frames, 2017, mixed media on canvas, 300x680 cm, special commission for the Onassis Foundation, installation view at the Olympic Towner Atrium, 5th Avenue, New York

Jannis Varelas, ZORO / New Flag for a New Country, 2015, guesso, oil, oistick, acrylic, permanent marker on canvas, 300x370 cm

Jannis Varelas, Red Truck Blue Lights / New Flag for a New Country, 2015, guesso, oil, oistick, acrylic, permanent marker on canvas, 300x370 cm

! Jannis Varelas, Community Painting / Smile, 2015, oil, oilstick, enamel, marker, pastel, acrylic, guesso on canvas, 200x240 cm

! Jannis Varelas, Untitled, 2016, oil, oil stick, marker, pastel, acrylic, guesso on canvas, 300x300 cm / 118x118 inches!

Jannis Varelas, Our House, 2018, Forsblom, Stockholm

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Jannis Varelas, Monster, 2017, installation view at the Onassis Cultural Center, Athens