At the show with the artist: Jannis Varelas on Titian’s Nymph and Shepherd

In occasion of a recent trip to Vienna we arranged a meeting with Los Angeles and Wien based artist Jannis Varelas to see a new body of works that  Galerie Krinzinger will present to the public for the first time in occasion of the upcoming edition of Art Brussels. But on the way to the artist’ studio, while the sunny Sunday afternoon was giving us the perfect reason for strolling around the city, we thought that visiting the Kunsthistoriches Museum would have been an ideal introduction to our studio visit.

So we entered the sumptuous palace, and after a few minutes wandering silently around the rooms, Jannis thoughtfully stopped in front of Titian’s Nymph and Shepherd for giving us his own reading of the artwork.

One of the reasons I love Titian’s painting, Nymph and Shepherd, is because of its very peculiar composition, as if the artist developed a cinematographic approach in the way he captured the frame, way before cinema was even a sparkle in anybody’s mind. It gives you the sense that the artist was holding the camera shooting a panoramic of the landscape, when suddenly he stumbled upon a couple flirting in the corner, and turned the camera back on them, moving from left to right.

Furthermore, the lighting conditions that Titian used in this piece is a characteristic that intrigues the gaze of the viewer, since what is supposed to be the painting’s only true source of light, finds itself in the background in the state of what is so-called nadir. Although this is an obvious fact, the main scene of the painting is in fact lighted by a rather strong and spooky source of light that one could say coming from the position of the viewer. This light clearly indicates studio circumstances, that enrich the mysterious aspect of the painting by giving it this astonishing fakeness of a work that has been produced in a studio set and now tries to make it in the real world as something profoundly true. I could even see this gimmick as an ancestor of the Lachapellian divine.

The detail of the leopard’s pelt on which the lady is lying, is one of my favorite parts from Nymph and Shepherd. It’s strangely comical gaze reminds me of the grimace that some cartoon characters make when they crush on the street and become decals, with their eyes designed as X’s and their tongues hanging out of their open mouths. One could say that in some strange way Titian is making a joke, showing the poor leopard dying again for the second time, under the pressure of the circumstances.

Another thing that I find captivating about this painting and has also impact on my personal work, is the use of dipoles and contradictions. While the background indicates a tumultuous and destructive previous situation, the serene expression on the couple’s faces takes them to a different context. Only God knows what the young shepherd talks into the plump lady’s ear, and what her thoughts are. What one can tell for sure, is that they are not bothered by their environment. Nonetheless, one could say that the fickle weather and the gusty conditions work as an allegory that depicts the feelings of the young couple.

Getting back to my work, although in my paintings sometimes I use the indication of a figure or a face, it is the surrounding space or background that describes the theme or the “situation”. In general, the allegorical connection of a semiotic indication with the structure that surrounds it, is something that I work a lot with, and I try to embody in my paintings.

For example, as for the semiotics in the works Community Painting, Community Painting/Alice and Irrational arguments in social thinking, the way that the figure works with what surrounds it or the way that the actual symbols are related to the parallel structures, creates an analogy where the signifier stops relating with the depiction itself, but arises from their internal relationship as a general sense.

Last but not least, something that in my belief is of great importance in Titian’s piece, is the fact that the shepherd seems to whisper something in the Nymph’s ear, indicating a potentiality, indicating that the piece is something that is about to happen, something that is already in front of our eyes. It is like the artist poses the question “What if”, a very strong question that remains relevant and makes Nymph and Shepherd, not a classical static work dealing with love and unfulfilled desire, but a position towards a possible feature.

All photos of Jannis Varelas’ paintings were taken from his studio in Vienna and will be presented for the first time by Galerie Krinzinger, in Art Brussels 2015.

November 21, 2022