Jean-Pierre Villafañe’s work operates at the intersection of painting and performance, where roles fracture, architectures dissolve, and theatricality dominates. Working primarily in oil on linen and wood panels, Villafañe's meticulous process involves layering translucent pigments to create rich, textured surfaces that oscillate between opacity and transparency. His brushwork often leaves a trace of the hand, capturing both the immediacy of gesture and the quiet precision of detail. Figures slip in and out of their own reflections, caught in the act of becoming—exaggerated, distorted, and delightfully uncertain.
We got to know a bit more about Jean-Pierre's practice through an interview ahead of the upcoming Paradise Lost Auction: 1-15 April 2025.
Lot 115. Jean-Pierre Villafane - Forbidden Fruit, Oil on wood panel
You studied architecture before pursuing painting, which is evident in much of your work. Do you see architectural elements remaining a permanent part of your style?
Absolutely. Architecture trained my eye to see space not just as a physical construct but as a psychological and theatrical one. I approach painting with the same mindset – I think of the canvas as a stage where figures, structures, and gestures are choreographed in dynamic tension. Architecture provides a sense of order, something rigid and rational, while the figures I paint destabilize that order, slipping between defined spaces, much like people navigate the structures of society itself.
I don’t see architectural elements ever leaving my work because they’re more than just a backdrop – they’re part of the language I use to explore power, identity, and the absurdity of role-playing. The way a space is framed dictates the performance within it. A towering column or a constricting hallway creates a certain type of movement, a certain type of interaction. I like pushing those tensions, using architecture as a way to suggest control and then letting the figures unravel that control completely.
Your paintings carry a strong Art Deco influence. What draws you to this aesthetic?
I wouldn’t necessarily say Art Deco is a conscious influence. If anything, I’m more drawn to the theatricality of Baroque architecture. The way it manipulates space, movement, and illusion to evoke grandeur and instability all at once. There’s something about the excess, the distortion of perspective, the way figures in Baroque compositions are often suspended in dramatic tension that feels closer to what I explore in my paintings.
At the same time, I’m interested in the rawness of Modernist architecture, the way concrete monoliths impose themselves onto a landscape, rigid and immovable. My work plays with that tension: spaces that feel heavy, looming, authoritative, yet within them, figures unravel, distort, and push against those boundaries. It’s about control and rupture, about architecture as both stage and constraint. So rather than Deco’s symmetry and polish, I think my work speaks more to architecture that carries a psychological weight – one that is more fragmented, more theatrical, and more unstable.
Your works vary in levels of abstraction. Do you plan this from the outset, or does it evolve throughout the painting process?
It’s never entirely planned, and that’s part of what keeps me engaged with painting. I usually start with a loose structure, a sense of space, a rhythm of movement, but I allow the work to dictate where it wants to go. Some figures emerge sharply, defined by clean lines, while others dissolve into fluid gestures or layered translucencies. That push-and-pull between clarity and ambiguity is important to me because it mirrors the way we experience reality, some moments are sharply in focus, others blur together in memory or sensation.
Abstraction, for me, isn’t about removing meaning but about expanding it. A figure that is only half-defined allows for more possibilities, it could be stepping forward, it could be disappearing, it could be something in between. That space of in-betweenness is what excites me.
Your work captures the contrast between rigid office culture and the chaotic release of nightlife in New York, almost like a theatrical performance. Are you interested in the performative aspects of city life? How do Puerto Rico’s carnival traditions and New York’s nightlife interact in your artistic vision?
Performance is at the core of my work. The city itself functions as a stage, where people assume different roles throughout the day, navigating expectations, hierarchies, and unwritten scripts. In the corporate world, people wear metaphorical (and sometimes literal) masks, performing power, restraint, and control. At night, those roles are shed, transformed, or exaggerated into something else entirely. Nightlife, like carnival, becomes a space of subversion, where people can be excessive, transgressive, unrecognizable.
Growing up in Puerto Rico, carnival was a ritualistic inversion of everyday life – an explosion of color, costume, and irreverence where social roles could be mocked, parodied, or temporarily overturned. New York’s nightlife, in its own way, functions similarly. It’s about fluid identity, about creating alternate realities, about slipping in and out of personas. That interplay, the tension between structure and collapse, order and indulgence, is something I’m constantly exploring in my work.
Jean-Pierre Villafane, Beneath the Suit
Many of your paintings explore excess, intimacy, and the duality of human behavior. What do you hope viewers take away from these contradictions?
I want viewers to recognize those contradictions in themselves. We are all a mix of indulgence and restraint, spectacle and sincerity, control and chaos. My work plays with these dualities, not to resolve them but to amplify them, to make them unavoidable.
Excess, for example, is often framed as something grotesque, but isn’t it just intimacy pushed to its limits? The urge to surround oneself with beauty, to collect, to consume, to escape into fantasy – these are deeply human impulses. My paintings exaggerate, distort, and reframe those impulses, forcing the viewer to question their own participation in them. Are they entertained? Are they disturbed? Are they complicit? I’m less interested in giving answers and more interested in making the contradictions impossible to ignore.
At the Armory Show, you introduced Inside Out, an interactive piece that blurred the line between viewer and performer. Do you see your work expanding into more immersive or theatrical experiences?
Yes, I’m really interested in pushing my work beyond the frame, into spaces where the viewer has to navigate it physically. Paintings already contain a performative element, there’s a choreography to how the eye moves across a composition, a rhythm to how the figures engage with the viewer, but I want to explore that more directly.
With Inside Out, I was fascinated by how people became part of the work, by how their presence altered the piece in real time. That’s something I want to keep expanding on, whether through interactive sculpture, staged installations, or environments where the boundaries between artwork and audience become more porous.
Jean-Pierre Villafane, with Embajada, Armory Show, 2023
By incorporating architectural elements like columns and archways, your paintings create structured yet whimsical spaces. Can you elaborate on how you design these settings? Why pair classical Corinthian columns—like those on the New York Stock Exchange—with chaotic tangles of limbs and figures?
In a lot of cases, architecture represents authority, permanence, and control. But bodies are fluid, impermanent, irreverent. I like placing those two forces in tension, rigid, imposing structures juxtaposed with figures that spill over, resist containment, or dissolve entirely.
The classical columns, archways, and architectural motifs in my work act almost like stage props, they create the illusion of order, a reference to institutions that shape our world, but the figures refuse to play by their rules. They lounge, they contort, they disrupt the symmetry. I’m interested in how these elements interact – how the built environment imposes a certain logic, and how the human body finds ways to slip through the cracks.
Do the themes of Paradise Lost resonate with you?
Absolutely. Paradise Lost is about rebellion, seduction, exile, and the performance of power – all themes that run through my work. Milton’s Satan is an actor, a strategist, a master of illusion. He embodies both defiance and desire, playing the role of tempter but also the role of the outcast.
In my paintings, figures exist in that moment of transgression, caught between pleasure and consequence, indulgence and restraint. The theatricality of the fall, the spectacle of corruption, the seduction of something forbidden, these ideas live in my work, whether through narrative, composition, or the way figures interact with one another.
Looking ahead, what themes or projects are you excited to explore in your future work?
I want to push my work further into immersive experiences, whether through sculptural paintings, staged installations, or interactive pieces that engage with the viewer in real time. Theatricality will always be central to my work, but I’m excited to see how that expands beyond the two-dimensional plane.
Inside the Artist's Studio
