Michael Zavros
A number of years ago, in the countryside south of Stuttgart in Germany, I stumbled across a stable yard where the owners kept the most magnificent horse I had ever seen. It was a warm blood, a particular breed much loved by enthusiasts for its combination of remarkable elegance and dexterity with the power of a large farm animal. It is, like most horse breeds, a testimony to humankind's long history of genetic engineering and an obsession with perfectible biology. Consequently, this horse conformed to every notion I had of the classical beauty of horse-flesh, as minutely detailed in Xenophon's The Art of Horsemanship.
Stuttgart derives its name from a long history of horse breeding but today it is more notable as the home of Mercedes Benz and that company's logo hovers above the train station like a beacon. There are obvious comparisons to be made between the refining of horse breeds and high-end mechanical engineering, or indeed luxury fashion. It is the promise of the ownership of something as close to perfection as we can humanly achieve, expensive to own but bestowing on us all the status and refinement we imagine human existence pursues.
In his body of work, Everything I wanted, exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Michael Zavros has created a meditation on this very European conflation of perfectible nature and human design He juxtaposes remarkable images of horses in movement with sumptuous baroque interiors and the details of prestige cars and fashion. Overlooking the entire gallery are two taxidermic trophy heads, a Greater Kudu and a Springbok.
Zavros in the past has been well known for his photorealist paintings of advertising images