ORPHANED
In dialogue with Théo Viardin
FVTVRIST Magazine // Interview by Elina P.
16 April 2026
Opening April 9, Vienna, Galerie Kandlhofer. Orphaned, a solo exhibition by Théo Viardin.
For his second exhibition with the gallery, Théo brings together eleven paintings made over the past two years. The work comes from a shift that happened along the way, something he later began to name as the sacred. In the interview, we speak about moments of shock that can trigger this sensation ~ moments where intensity suddenly shifts ~ how to hold onto it, what place the artist takes as an observer confronted with it, how painting can carry that kind of charge and what remains of it once it’s there.
©Flora Matthieu
You’ve said that while continuing your earlier research, something shifted along the way. When did you realize that this shift was actually the question of the sacred? When did it enter your work, and how did it affect this body of work?
Théo: I wasn’t working on something completely different, but rather in another direction. I was researching carnival and Lent, in tension with Nietzsche’s ideas of the Apollonian and the Dionysian (editor notes: concepts introduced in The Birth of Tragedy, referring broadly to order/structure versus chaos/excess). I wanted to see how those notions might still resonate today.
While researching celebrations: what they are for, what they do, I came across Roger Caillois’ book Man and the Sacred (L’Homme et le sacré, 1939). It was written in the 1940s, so some ideas feel dated now, but it was a turning point for me.
Caillois argues that the sacred cannot exist without the profane, that the two are inseparable. He describes the sacred as a category of sensibility. I think of it more as a sensation. That idea immediately resonated with me: as a painter, you are trying to produce and transmit sensations.
It made me look back at works that had deeply marked me and notice that many of them carried a sacred dimension. I began asking myself what elements created that effect. Were there recurring signs? Was there something universal that triggers this sensation across time, or is it culturally constructed? I even made diagrams, comparing artworks that generated this feeling for me and others that did not.
Caillois also writes about a sacred of the pure and of the impure. That duality made a lot of sense to me. I started identifying visual signs connected to those ideas and experimenting with how to bring them into my paintings.
On one hand, this research made me aware of the sacred that was already present in my work. On the other, it pushed me to consider what I could add to potentially generate that sensation, even if I don’t succeed every time.
Exhibition view, Kandlhofer gallery ©Manuel Carreon Lopez.
Can you share what did you introduce into the work to try to generate that sensation?
I had to start from situations in my own life where that sensation appeared. For me, it has something like vertigo. It can appear in moments of rupture, of a sudden change in intensity: falling in love, learning you have an illness, learning of someone’s death, witnessing marriages or unions, seeing injuries. These are shocks.
Sometimes I wonder if the sacred is a kind of narrative way of managing the shock produced by a differential of intensity - brutal changes of situation. And you can understand the power and authority of religion in relation to that power produced by shocks: the idea that this sensation can be reused, administered, maybe even softened, because it can be frightening. I don’t mean that negatively.
And then there is the cultural construction: as someone formed within a very Europe-centered art history, I looked at how an aesthetic of the sacred is built. I inevitably went toward Christian art, not as a monolith, but across the history of representations it produced. It instituted forms that can automatically trigger the sacred response..
Exhibition view, Kandlhofer gallery ©Manuel Carreon Lopez.
When you think about the public, is there a sensation or feeling you hope they experience with these works? Or do you prefer to leave it fully open?
It’s complex. As a painter, you become a kind of channel for sensations. I definitely don’t want to make tutorial paintings or prescriptions of anything.
But I’ll nuance it: what made the sacred question so pertinent for me is that for a long time I had formulated that certain paintings I love produce - what I call - a “blast.” Often I know I love an artwork within the first seconds, before I can intellectualize why, or what the artist intended. There’s something autonomous in that. That’s the blast.
And through the sacred, I could clarify part of why that blast seizes me: some artworks create an instantaneous differential of intensity. And I think I have that relationship to my own work too. I would like my work to produce something like that.
So once a painting is finished, how do you feel about it? Do you stay attached to it, or do you kind of let it go?
I don’t have a strong attachment to finished works. What matters to me is the production phase, that’s where things happen. I’m oriented toward the future. Each painting is a step toward the next. Once a painting is finished, it’s not that it has no interest for me, but what needs to happen has happened. I let it live.
Sometimes I wonder if the sacred is a kind of narrative way of managing the shock produced by a differential of intensity - brutal changes of situation.
Your work is also tied to literature and textual references. Do you see writing as something you might pursue more directly?
I do read regularly and take it seriously. But I’m not someone who is devouring books nonstop. That said, I think one day I would like to write, I just don’t know in what form yet.
I don’t have many contemporary examples of painters writing from inside their daily lived experience of painting. Art critics do it very well, but I think it’s interesting to have that viewpoint too: how daily experience nourishes thought.
Exhibition view, Kandlhofer gallery ©Manuel Carreon Lopez.
About Théo Viardin
Théo Viardin (b. 1992, Paris) is a French artist based in Paris. Trained in graphic design in Nantes and Toulouse, he co-founded the visual studio Embuscade in 2015 before developing a painting practice.
His work moves through questions of the living, otherness, and our relationship to the environment, grounded in a broader concern for the conditions we are collectively producing. Rather than addressing these issues directly, his paintings approach them through situations, figures, and moments where something shifts—where the familiar becomes unstable.
Recent solo exhibitions include SPHINX I SILENCE (Blank Gallery, Tokyo, 2025), Enigma (PACT, Paris, 2024), Beautiful Chaos of Existence (L21, Palma de Mallorca, 2023), Solitudes (NBB, Berlin, 2023), and Et In Arcadia Ego (Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, 2023). His work has also been shown in group exhibitions at Suzanne Tarasiève (Paris), The Hole (New York), and Everyday Gallery (Antwerp), among others.
