Last week I attended the opening of the New Flags for a New Country contemporary art exhbition by Jannis Varelas at the Breeder Gallery. 3/4 of the Athens hipster culture community were there. The rest were somewhere abroad & couldn’t make it…
I have been familiar with Jannis Varelas’ art for quite some time (in fact I have a limited-edition signed print by him hanging on the wall above my home desk) and I love what he had been painting for years: awe & fear inspiring tough figures like masculine totems. What’s really important about Jannis is that some really powerful collections (Dakis Ioannou or the Saatchi among others) own some of his best previous work.
It seems that the pop culture of the States (where he has been spending his time recently) had a strong influence on him & his new work is more colorful & playful than before. Really really different although you can read the same old complicated soul between the lines. Some interesting change is happening there…
After the succesful opening we all gathered at Kitty Kat club for a rather boring party. But aren’t all parties at Kitty Kat boring?