Michael Zavros turns his gaze inward, to home and self, depicting and documenting the Zavros lifestyle in his work. He paints what he appears to have become - a poster boy for a life perfected.
Viewed collectively The Silver Fox offers something of a family portrait, albeit a non-conventional one. The exhibition hinges on the tension between truths and fictions. In an essay published in a new book on Zarvos, Laurence Simmons makes an analogy with the great Renaissance chronicler Giorgio Vasari whose famous tome The Lives of Artists melded fact and fiction. Whether by design or fate Zavros's own (brief) history has become the stuff of fictionalised legend - that he paints only in suits, that he lives a life of unrestrained glamour, that his Instagram depicts his best life. The Silver Fox plays with the veracity of the image and the life - his life - that it depicts.
At the opening we will have advance copies of the new book, Michael Zavros, published by Manuscript in association with Starkwhite and Philip Bacon Galleries and designed by Inhouse. It includes writing by Robert Leonard, Chris Saines and Laurence Simmons, along with interviews by Rhana Devenport and Beatrice Page.
Upstairs John Reynolds continues his exploration of McCahon's missing hours with RocksInTheSky... a suite of loose canvases that follow on from WalkWithMe...(2016) and FrenchBayDarkly...(2017). Reynolds describes his ongoing McCahon project as "part missing person's archive, part pilgrimage, part art historical vagabondage."
Press release courtesy Starkwhite.
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