JANNIS VARELAS
Born in 1977 in Athens, Greece, Jannis Varelas studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, the University of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and at the Royal College of Arts in London. He garnered international recognition and acclaim after participating in the “Prospect.l New Orleans” international contemporary art biennial and in the first Athens Biennale, “Destroy Athens”. Varelas is an artist dedicated foremost to drawing; with pencil and gouache he creates life-size and larger-than-life size works that are highly associative. His motives are drawn from a wide and very diverse range of cultures and media. Formal aspects of traditional icon painting encounter contemporary and at times sexually charged images from news and life-style magazines. Jannis Varelas is based in Athens and Vienna.