It is wrong to see her as a child but inappropriate to consider her an adult. In this context, the painting seems inappropriately erotic— Henson territory.
As Zavros expands beyond his painting practice into photography and performance, something essential about our relationship to his vision changes, and we enter into a stronger confrontation than before
In its self-conscious exemplification of beauty, Michael Zavros’s Bad Dad series is an exploration into the alluring appeal of a polished aesthetic and how this is enacted in the realm of consumerism and the art gallery itself.
Like all of Zavros’s work there is a sense of great time, of majesty and importance, but cool and beautiful and perhaps unattainable, except as an ideal. Zavros reminds us, the old symbols have meaning.
Zavros’s paintings seem to celebrate the cultural achievements of great wealth, while also acknowledging that the history of these sites is never separate from the circumstances of their creation, no matter how easily it may be ignored in a contemporary culture of heritage tourism.
The exhibition recognises changes in contemporary art over the last quarter century - such that it no longer needs to be critical of its audience, genesis or past.
The title of the exhibition derives from hunting decoy whistles that lure foxes from their lair with sounds that mimic distressed prey or, in the decoy’s most potent form, the sound of a female fox.
His paintings and drawings are as intoxicating as they are sickly sweet. They are the visual equivalent of those luxury liqueurs such as Cointreau or Frangelico. And yet I find them beguiling.
