Zac Koukoravas: Blue Lines
Zac Koukoravas is a Melbourne-based contemporary visual artist and sculptor whose works are equal parts geometric, kaleidoscopic and abstract. Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2012, Koukoravas has built a number of works around his unique style: painting on multiple layers of glass and acrylic sheets to form colourful kaleidoscopes. His paintings, which often take on different formations depending on the viewer’s relation to them, are inspired by a host of subjects including graffiti, electronic music and urban landscapes.
Now, Koukoravas is preparing to release his latest body of work in the exhibition Blue Lines, which opens today at Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne. The exhibition is an honest look at the aesthetic elements of night, like colour, light and atmosphere. The heavy weight of darkness washing over urban environments, and the mysterious, equalising elements it brings, manifests itself in his new paintings.
While Koukoravas in the past has dabbled with aleatoricism – a school of art that leaves parts of the creative process up to chance – Blue Lines was crafted with strict parameters including restrictions on forms, colours and compositions. Perhaps most notable is his isolated colour palette, which was entirely limited to various shades of blue and its iterations within dusk and dawn.
Ahead of the opening of Blue Lines, we spoke to Koukoravas about his thought process regarding the exhibition and some of his more long-running influences. As artists are known to do, Koukoravas is constantly taking in his surroundings and using these stimuli to influence his work. In the end, it makes for a collection that is both staggering in its emotion and impressive in its scope.
fluoro. Talk us through how your work explores the visual play of light, depth, shadow and space.
Zac Koukoravas. I use a range of spray-painting techniques to create abstract geometric arrangements that play with refraction. My paintings give the illusion of three-dimensional space because the flat application of paint is applied to different levels and sides of glass and acrylic panels. The visual play of light, depth, shadow and space allows me to create works of complexity, multiplicity and illusionary geometry.
f. What is the importance of imposing strict parameters in your creative process?
ZK. I find that within limitations there are seemingly infinite possibilities, so I impose some parameters on myself in the creative process. These include restrictions on colours, forms and compositions. The glass and acrylic materials I use are unforgiving, which forces me to exhaust an idea before moving on to the next approach. I develop each piece using new techniques discovered along the way.
f. Does music have an impact on your work? If so, how?
ZK. Yes, music plays an important part in my life and my art practice. I was into hip hop and electronic music in the 70s and 80s; the emergence of intelligent dance music (IDM) in the 90s strengthened my interest in these genres and subcultures. IDM artists such as The Orb and Autechre pioneered individual and abstract forms of electronic music. Sound is an abstract form that is subjective and can have elements of controlled chaos – I explore these themes in my own art practice.
f. What are some further mediums that affect and are explored in your work?
ZK.The rhythm of my life and surrounding environment is reflected in my work. Embedded within my practice are a diverse range of references including graffiti, music, architecture and our relation to natural and urban environments.
f. What was your motivation behind Blue Lines and what do you want to achieve with this body of work?
ZK. Blue Lines is inspired by the light, colour and atmosphere of the night. Darkness equalises everything – clearing the landscape of detail and context; filling it with the unknown where buildings become rectangular shapes and trees become amorphous masses. An uneasy emotional response is triggered when dusk falls and night blankets us with darkness. The imagination takes over and fears manifest.
f. Why was the colour palette used in Blue Lines kept to blue and black?
ZK. Last year my piece Blue Memory won the Best Artist Award at Denfair. This year I restricted my colour palette to shades of blue to imitate the colours at night, particularly the changing light between dusk and dawn. I have also used black and white for contrast.
Blue Lines is on at Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne until Saturday 26 August 2017.
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