Concrete Playground

I want. I Want. I WANT! and I spend too much time looking in the mirror (and to be honest, at my reflection in shop windows). Ooh so painful to admit.

There's something of the narcissist in me, I guess.

It is true, as Jason Smith tells us in the catalogue essay for Michael Zavros' upcoming exhibition at GrantPirrie, that "none of us are immune to the lure of beautiful things and degrees of covetousness", and also that "wanting to look good, and wishing to enjoy the benefits of being desirable, are not in themselves irrational desires". It is only when covetousness and vanity begin to define the self that problems arise.

Calling in the fox is partly Zavros' response to his own observation of "an ennui pervading consumer markets: a disaffected desire that actually loses touch with the beautiful". Predominately concerned with ideas of male beauty and flawlessness, Calling in the fox is nevertheless a critique of the pitfalls of contemporary culture. Zavros uses oil paint, charcoal and spray paint to fashion recoded images of baroque architecture (Echo, Zavros' largest painting to date recaptures Versailles' Hall of Mirrors), advertising and fitness equipment. These labour intensive paintings homaging artistic and cultural achievement are accompanied by austere bronzes, trophies of the hunt to which the exhibition's title makes reference.

The trouble is, Zavros' works are so beautiful, their aesthetic so gloriously now, that upon seeing them covetousness is sure to overflow.

Image: Signature Scent, oil on canvas, 2009, courtesy the artist and Grantpirrie.