Neapoli, Kypseli, Los Angeles, Vienna, London, Barcelona. In this order or any other, the main element in the life of Greek painter Jannis Varelas is moving from one place to another – for work, pleasure, exhibitions of artist friends or for his own exhibitions. In a few days he will leave his home in Athens for his home in Vienna. His home and workshop in Los Angeles will remain closed for many more months, as friends from California have informed him that the contamination of the land and water from the huge January wildfires continues.
Even our meeting for the planned lunch and interview was not limited to one place. From Petralona, where we ate, we went to the district of Kypseli for coffee, dessert and a tour of his Athens studio. It is hidden behind the painted glass of a former craft factory, with exposed cement, a large bench with painting materials, and the team of collaborators preparing the paintings that stand on the walls. In the background, bookcases, a huge work table and then the basement, a 21st century Aladdin’s cave, filled with outrageous costumes, hats and constructions await the models who will pose for a next project.
Varelas was born in 1977. He grew up in Athens’ northeastern suburb of Pefki and remembers the pine forest and the sheep that grazed there. In the summers he used to ride his bike a lot. He went to school in another neighborhood, so his childhood and teenage friends were scattered around the city center, from Exarchia to Kolonaki. They took frequent walks to the quiet Dexameni Square. As the son of a director, he transformed discussions about cinema into images in their minds. His mother had covered the walls in his childhood room with a blackboard. “She would tell me stories and draw them on the board. Then I would go and draw next to hers,” he says.
He is dyslexic and this determined his relationship with reality. Today we know that it was also instrumental in his painting. “The hardest thing I have ever done in my life was to finish school,” Valeras says. “The first time they gave me a text, instead of looking at the letters, I looked at the spaces between the words. ‘What an amazing landscape this is!’ I thought. Then I realized that others did not see it the same way.”
He briefly recounts the rest of his life. “I studied at the School of Fine Arts in Thessaloniki. Then I came to Athens, to Rena Papaspyrou’s painting studio. It was wonderful, as if we were at home; we spend the whole day there working and making jokes. She allowed us to paint what we liked and taught us. At the same time, I started exhibiting in my small country. The first exhibition was in 2003, at Gallery 7. I left for a postgraduate degree in London. Something bigger happens then. Then I go to Vienna. I find my first house by chance and paid my landlord with works of art. It continued like this. I also paid for the tooth fillings at the dentist with works. Then I find myself with a workshop in Los Angeles.”
“You succeeded quickly,” I say. “The course, compared to the history of Greek painting, is not usual, at least before the artist turns 50.”
“I consider myself part of a generation that was more interested in what was happening abroad than in Greece. Most of us traveled and stayed abroad for several years. Some of us more so, some of us less, we all managed to make a living from art,” he replies.
Works by Varelas are part of the public collections of the Albertina and the Belvedere museums in Vienna, the Fundacion AMMA in Mexico, Space K in Seoul, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, and, in Greece, the Benaki Museum, the Onassis Collection, Daki Ioannou Collection and the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), while three of his new works are housed at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center on Syngrou Avenue.
“It is also a matter of luck that I started earning an income from painting very early on. When you show your works somewhere, it does not mean that you will sell them. But it certainly plays a role to be in a larger market than the Greek one, with more collectors who want to buy very new things,” he explains.
Have you ever been tempted to consider what appeals artistically to an international audience and adapting to the demand?
No, it doesn’t work that way. First of all, the range of influential things in the art world is huge. You can have a feeling of the fashions, but in the end it doesn’t matter that much. My work is what I started and have continued for many years. At first it was black and white, hard drawings on paper. Since then I have been working on my painting “language.” I have made videos and performances, but everything falls into the same framework. The worlds that concern me are always the worlds around us and those who inhabit them. The figures I make are the people I see, but everything happens as a mirroring, as a reflection of reality.
What’s trending in the Los Angeles art scene right now?
There’s a big buzz about Latin artists. These people have been working there for 40 years, but they’ve just been discovered by the market. And fashions are determined by the market, not by the creators and their work. Previously, there was a trend with older female painters who were discovered late. There’s still interest in the vast Global South and in minorities of various kinds. Obviously this is good, in the sense that it overcomes taboos and becomes a “correction” in the history of art. But when we talk about fashion, we’re also talking about hysteria, unfortunately.
I’ve heard that in this climate, being a white, heterosexual male artist in Europe today limits the response to your work. Is that true?
Absolutely, and all of this borders on the absurd. Of course, one cannot ignore the fact that female artists and the LGBTQI community have been on the artistic fringe for decades. But fashions may concern individuals, but they should not influence museum curators or those who organize major exhibitions. State museums have the obligation to represent a cultural policy that is consistent with the prestige of their country and with what they want to promote. To research for the expression of what is newer and more important.
Do you think the state museums of contemporary art in Greece have such a “policy”?
Greece remained for many years stuck to its ancient past. Greek antiquities are an interesting, essential, serious issue, but it took ages to open the National Museum of Contemporary Art. It took us ages to create institutions for contemporary art. But now that this has happened, I believe that the people who run these museums should contribute to the organization of a national policy for culture. And be heard at the government level.
When you present your work abroad, are you a Greek artist or just an artist?
Yes and no. In the United States, this issue doesn’t concern them at all, in Europe it may play a more important role. I believe that art should not have a national identity. Of course, the concept of origin is inherent in the artist’s work, not so much morphologically as in the sense of experiences, thoughts, culture. That’s the only way I accept it.
‘I don’t know any recipe for success’
Varelas says he is not particularly good at promoting his work. “Let’s say I m quite social,” he says, which is necessary, but he is not into social media. Although he has “definitely been lucky,” it’s not necessary that something good will also be successful. There are thousands of examples of people who were never able to sell anything, and were excellent artists who were discovered later, he explains. It is important not to give up. “I believe that the basic prerequisite, the necessary and sufficient condition for success is to have work to do, and to do it with the right passion, and the right love, and the right intensity, and the right perseverance. And once that is there, the rest will happen – or not,” the artist says. “But I don’t know any recipe for success.” It’s important for an artist to do the best he or she can without expecting anything, because one works first of all for oneself and then for others, he adds.