Nothing is left to chance and every detail is carefully calculated: the hyperrealistic (and divisive) paintings of Michael Zavros

• Even the essays in the catalogue accompanying this new exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, are riddled with quotations from the artist.
• Assembled by curator Peter McKay, it contains over 100 pieces, primarily paintings, but also including sculptures, photographs, video pieces and performance art.
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Mastery of technique

• Zavros exhibits a mastery of an exquisite technique and a refined sensibility.
• In his earliest pieces, clippings from a fashion magazine were meticulously reproduced as oil paintings as in Man in wool suit (1998).
• The huge Acropolis Now (2023) mural in acrylic, measuring about 7.5 metres by almost 20 metres, frames the entrance to his exhibition.
• This applies to some of the most accomplished and acclaimed pieces including Bad Dad (2013), and Phoebe is dead/McQueen (2010).

Conspicuous consumption

• On a very simple level, one can say much of his imagery touches on highly desirable luxury goods, as items of conspicuous consumption.
• The artist has reasoned that, as many people aspire to own such items, exquisitely rendered images of them would appeal to the same people.
• Is Zavros celebrating the existing world order and its elite and the consumption of luxury goods, or is he critiquing it, shining a light on folly and exposing it with irony and creating subversive art?

Power and prestige

• The large installation piece Drowned Mercedes (2023) has the aspirational car of his dreams made functionless by being filled with water.
• In the garage of the house where he normally parks his car, during the floods the water would have flooded this car.
• This gleaming symbol of power and prestige is destroyed through the impact of climate change.