Jannis Varelas

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GALERIE KRINZINGER SEILERSTTTE 16 1010 WIENTEL +43 1 513 30 06 FAX +43 1 513 30 06 33

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JANNIS VARELAS

BROWN BOX AND THE

BROKEN THEATER

FEBRUARY 8 - MARCH 9, 2012


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Jannis VarelasVideo Background/The blind man/Part 2, 2012

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paper collage, Lambdaprint overpainted

180 x 150 cm


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Jannis VarelasTable cloth/Dead, 2012

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mixed media /Collage und drawing auf Tisch


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Jannis VarelasKings Lear Costume for Blautheater (Outerspace Part 4), 2011

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mixed media and paper collage on paper

255 x 150 x 10 cm


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Jannis VarelasPuppet Drawing, 2012

VAR/P 60

mixed media on paper

170 x 150 cm


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Jannis VarelasPuppet Drawing/Rosencrantz, 2012

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165 x 150 cm


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Jannis VarelasPuppet Drawing, 2012

VAR/P 62


265 x 150 cm


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Jannis VarelasPuppet Drawing/Guildenstern, 2012

VAR/P 63


265 x 150 cm


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Jannis VarelasPlasticine Noise/Villain/Blue, 2012

VAR/P 64


200 x 150 cm


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Jannis VarelasPlasticine Noise/Villain/Black, 2012

VAR/P 65


200 x 150 cm


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Jannis VarelasPlastecine Noise/Villain/Brown, 2012

VAR/P 66


160 x 150 cm


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Jannis VarelasPlasticine Noise/Villain/Pink, 2012

VAR/P 67


190 x 150 cm


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Jannis VarelasSolange's Dream/Videoinstallation, 2012

VAR/I 1

2 Videos, fabric


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Exhibition Views


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JANNIS VARELASBROWN BOX AND THE BROKEN THEATER

Exhibition Duration: Feburary 8 March 9, 2012

Brazenly unbound by medium Jannis Varelas!practice effortlessly leaps from large scalemultimedia drawings to sculptures, to videos and video props such as set design objects

and video backgrounds as long as installations which flirt with materialistic lowness.Prioritizing the fragmented over a systematic whole, he proposes novel pictorial

possibilities via a constant negation of stylistic coherence. His figures and other imitationsof the human form have a symbolic value while anatomy (eyes, vulvas, feet, phalluses)acts as an anagram of infinite permutations. Throughout his works, a blunt presentation of

desire, horror, mess and perversity can be approached as a committed effort to unmaskand demystify signifiers, symbols and archetypes. All the while he keeps throwing innagging questions about human nature with an emphasis on highlighting identity!sconstructed and manufactured quality.

Varelas! new body of work underscores the inherently theatrical nature of his practice and

offers an occasion to untangle his stylistic and referential webs. Late 70!s and 80!s TV-shows made for kids, The Theatre of the Absurd and Jean Genet!s play The Maids (astory of suppressed violence and ceremonial murder written in 1945 and first staged in1947) appear to be the vortex from which his current works emerge and create thedialectical relation between the uncanny and the recollection of a known experience.

The notorious French novelist-poet-thief argued that we!re all controlled by the fear ofpoverty and his controversial plays are depictions of ritual struggles between thedispossessed and their oppressors. In a world where the majority feels cheated by thedistance between expectations and reality, Genet!s prose is undoubtedly relevant; butbeyond the typology of the master and servant archetypes, the codes of representation

and the codes of behavior become entangled in Varelas! approach.

In his video installation Solange!s dream, Varelas exploits the durational nature of the

medium and the traditional structure of start, middle and end by breaking down the storyand reordering the expected sequence of the play. Like recovered memories, thesetemporal distortionsgenerate an ambivalent state of dream and fantasy in which realitiesare replaced by absurd reflections and offer a greater fluidity of meaning. At the sametime, his handmade marionette protagonist, as well as the absurd iron figurine, like inmuch contemporary artworks, appears as proxy an alibi, a surrogate and an envoy, what

Thomas Ligotti characterizes in The Conspiracy Against The Human Race as the"malignantly useless! nature of the world, luring out the sculptural and performative

opportunities that puppetry provides.


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For the main part of this show, Varelas found in The Maids the perfect double entendre,"the crudest metaphor! available to represent his interest in the consequences of humanpretensions, the implications of abnormal behavior (in Foucault's sense of the term) andthe contrast between appearance and reality. By adapting such a play and using it not as

allegory or manifesto but as a story, he creates a "drama of signs!, a riddle wrapped in anenigma. This is a clever strategy and apparently the essential "Rgle du Jeu! so that thegame might go on; thus, Varelas attests that there is no synthesis but a perpetualdialectics: antithesis-thesis-antithesis-thesis (Excerpt from Anal-yzes by Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, DESTEPrize 2011 exhibition catalogue.)

In the show, the viewer can also see Brown Box, a room installation containing puppet

drawings, made as a starting point for the artist new project, an imaginary TV-show, TheBlind Man. A three-episode video work taking its title from the New York Dada journal,The Blind Man, published by the New York Dadaists in 1917.The installation is a glimpse on Varelas! new fractional video piece, which will be made outof three parts, combining the theatrical plot of Tom Stoppart!s Rosencrantz andGuildenstern Are Dead with the neurotic narrative structure of live TV-shows, featuringgames for under aged kids. The piece aims to create an absurd existentialist tragicomedy.


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Jannis Varelas

Born in Athens, Greece in 1977

Lives and works in Athens and Vienna

Education:

1998-2003 Athens School of Fine Arts

2001 University of Fine Arts, Barcelona

2004-2006 Royal College of Arts, London

Selected Solo Shows:

2012 Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati, Ohio, US

Brown box and the Broken Theater, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, Austria

2011 The Oblong Series, The Breeder, Athens, Greece

The Oblong Box, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens, Greece

2010 Jannis Varelas, Brandybell Series, Autocenter Berlin, Germany

2009 The Breeder, Athens, Greece

2008 Mont Ventoux, Technopolis, Gkazi, Athens, curated by Nadia Argyropoulou, Greece2007 Art Forum Berlin 2007, Krinzinger Projekte, Berlin, Germany

Man on the Moon, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, Austria

2006 Spaceship Columbia, Frieze Art Fair (with The Breeder), London, UK

Caliban Case, Kirkhoff Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark

2004 Juvenile, Gazon Rouge, Athens, Greece

2003 Karikomoontes, Gallery 7, Athens, Greece

Selected Group Shows:

2011 Control - Magazin4 - Bregenzer Kunstverein, Bregenz, Austria. Curated by CarstenFock

Traum und Realitt - Galerie Siegel-Springmann, Freiburg

...from erewhon to here knows when..., Kunstverein Schattendorf, Austria

10 YEARS AUTOCENTER, Autocenter, Berlin, Germany

AUSSER HAUS. Ausstellungen und Performances, Kunstverein Heidelberg, Germany

based in Berlin 2011, Berlin, Germany

#$%&$'* Humanism - Faggionato Fine Arts, London (England), curated by Nadia

Argyropoulou

Responsolidarity, group show, Galerie Utopia / THE FORGOTTEN BAR PROJECT.

Berlin-Athens @ ReMap3, Athens, Greece

DESTE Prize 2011, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece


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2010 A Thing Is A Thing In A Whole Which It!s Not, Mike Potter Projects, wechselnde

Stdte, Cologne, Germany

12th Cairo Biennial, Cairo, Egypt

The Marathon Marathon, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Nadia Argyropoulou,

Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece

Supernature An Exercise in Loads AMP, Athen, Greece

Aktualitt eines Mediums. Nader Ahriman bis Chen Zhen, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna,

Austria

Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, New Museum of

Contemporary Art, New York City, US

Lebt und Arbeitet in Wien III Stars in a Plastic Bag, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna,Austria

100th Exhibition, Auticenter, Berlin, Germany

Wale und Aale, Ve.Sch, Vienna, Austria

2009 CICLO KENNETH ANGER, Galeria Ze dos Bois, Lisbon, Spain

ARTISTS OF THE GALLERY _ A SPECIAL SELECTION, GALERIE Krinzinger,

Vienna, Austria

Forschungsbericht - COCO (Contemporary Concerns), Vienna, Austria

Sniper - Galerie Biedermann, Munich, Germany

Bright Morning Star, Kenneth Anger series, Galeria Ze de Bois, Lisbon, Portugal

2008 Prospect.1 New Orleans, 1st International Art Biennial in the city of New Orleans, curated

by Dan Cameron, New Orleans, US

Autumn, CCA Andratx Gallery, Palma, Spain

Jekyll Island, curated by Erik Parker & Max Henry, Honor Fraser, Los Angeles, US

Whatever!s Whatever, Hydra school projects, curated by Dimitrios Antonitsis, Hydra,

Greece

The Skat Players, curated by Sarah McCrory, Vilma Gold Gallery, London, UK

Quo Vadis, Autocenter, Berlin, Germany

2007 Wild West, Galerie Gebrder Lehmann, Berlin, Germany

Destroy Athens, 1st Athens Biennial, curated by Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka Yio, Augistine

Zenakos, Athens, Greece

True Romance, The Breeder, Athens, Greece

Black and White, Ibid Projects, London, UK

RIP - Paper Fashion, Benakis Museum, curated by Vassilis Zidianakis, , Athens, Greece2006 Royal College of Art M.A. Degree show, London, UK

What Remains is Future, curated by Nadja Argyropoulou, City of Patras, Greece

Panic Room, works from The Dakis Joannou Collection, curated by Jeffrey Deitch and

Kathy Grayson, DESTE Foundation, Athens, Greece

2005 Emblematic Display, curated by Catherine Wood, ICA London, UK

Absolute Summer, Kirkhoff Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark

The Hidden Charms of Drawing, A.A.A. Art, Athens, Greece

2004 Resemblance Some How, Benakis Museum, Athens, Greece

2003 Anthropography, Frisiras Museum, Athens, Greece

Documents

Jannis Varelas