Embracing chance

For artist Zac Koukoravas, embracing chance and chaos in his art made for a much more interesting final product


For months, artist Zac Koukoravas couldn’t understand why people would gravitate towards his unfinished work instead of his finished, perfectly executed art.

His geometrically intricate early work would only hold someone’s attention for just a few seconds.

Yet when he started putting in mistakes or taking out whole sections, he found that people would linger, questioning what they were seeing and trying to figure out what was missing.

That was the breakthrough he needed to find his artistic style and finally break out of the perfectionist mode.

“It blew my mind, why is it that something that looks absolutely perfect, yes you like it, but you’re not interested in it for more than a second?” he tells Neos Kosmos.

“Why is it that when the pattern is broken it is so much more interesting?

“It’s the inquisitive mind.”

The vision of beauty is boring, he says, it’s what’s out of the ordinary that keeps people’s attention.

People expect perfection, but when it’s not there, they immediately try and figure out how to fix it, and contemplate whether fixing it would necessarily make it better.

Zac, 39, had to embrace something that many artists struggle to do – give up some of their control over the final look.

In his studio, you’ll find a small box filled with triangle paper cuttings, like the offcuts you’d throw away in art class after you’ve cut out your stencil.

Triangles in all shapes and colours, straight lines and the odd square are at his disposal. He picks up a handful and scatters the shapes on his black table, leaving his art to chance.

“I don’t want to make any decisions apart from the colour or something else after the fact,” he says.

“The beginning is based on throwing something out there and seeing it land.”

He might also start with a piece of paper and fold it and fold it till distinct lines overlap each other. He is then able to stencil or mark it onto his canvas or glass.

The Greek Australian has only been a professional artist for two years, amazingly never believing he could ever make his interest a full time job.

Trained as an electrician in Greece, and abandoning that for a career in hospitality in Melbourne, Zac was comfortable in his job, but not exactly happy.

“In my mid 30s, I was having a drink one Friday night with a close friend of mine and I was complaining about my job, as you do, and she said, ‘what would you like to do if you had a chance to do whatever you like?’,” he remembers.

“I said I would love to paint or draw and someone would pay me for that and that would be my career.”

That was it, after finally admitting to himself that it was a deep passion that deserved his undivided attention, he decided to make a go of it.
He enrolled in the Victorian College of the Arts and discovered his talent head on.

After struggling to find a way to finish his work without overdoing it, he was able to hit the ground running with the interest he got from his final piece for university.

Architect Charles Justin took one look at the abstract, angular lines and was hooked. He bought Zac’s first piece of work and is now one of his main collectors.

Talent and a wide appeal has set Zac apart from new artists on the scene.

He is the only full time working artist out of his class of 2012, the only one to be represented at a gallery and has sold more artwork in the past two years than many in their careers.

He understands and tolerates the fact that many people buy art to better suit their couch, and is open to taking suggestions, like backing colour.
Initially painting on black canvas, he’s moved to glass and Perspex, opening up the colour options for his clients and his fans.

His first solo exhibition at Flinders Lane Gallery in April was quite a hit with the art world. His exhibition, ‘Visualised’, was all based on wood shavings, from the small, like pencil sharpenings, to the larger woodwork offcuts.

His popularity early on helped him decide to quit his job at Camberwell High School as an art technician in March and commit all his time as an artist.
A bold move for an artist, who can’t rely on the safety net anymore.

The words of his migrant parents always seem to come back to haunt him when he’s feeling slightly worried.

“Now they’re supportive because I’m doing well, but it was always – ‘are you sure this is what you want to do, why don’t you get a real job?’,”

He migrated back to Greece with his parents when he was 16, leaving school in Melbourne and taking up trade school in Thessaly.

He became an electrician, but never fitted the mould.

“I stayed there for the year and a half of the course and I packed up and left.

“It’s the same conversation I have with Greeks here: ‘So how did you find it?’ ‘Oh it was great, but I wouldn’t want to work there’,” he says.

His rush to return to Melbourne to rejoin its graffiti art scene was inevitable.

His artwork now actually has a bit of a base in graffiti. His geometric shapes are created by using airbrush pens filled with his mixed paint.

Looking at his work from afar, many people can’t help but think it’s all computer generated.

He gets those comments weekly, and was in fact asked to submit work for an exhibition showcasing work that looks digital.

“I have a show, ‘Screen Space’ in the city, who only exhibit video work, but currently they’re doing an exhibition that shows painters who paint in a digital way,” he says with a laugh.

He finds that his use of straight lines and colours are easily translated to a digital format.

His abstract work isn’t jarring or avant garde, it works perfectly with natural phenomena.

He in fact gets quite a lot of inspiration from nature.

“I enjoy looking at the really simple things in life, like watching an ant carry its food to its nest, watching a fresh flower bulb; there are patterns in there,” he says.

His idea of something chaotic all coming into place in the end is the heart of his work. He starts painting triangles on a clear Perspex panel, then flips it, and starts on the back, tracing triangles again.

On another panel, he starts again, going from front to back. The final piece only comes together when he pieces the two, or sometimes three panels together.

He uses the analogy of a tree losing its leaves to explain his process.

“If you’ve ever watched a tree lose its leaves, it looks like a completely random pattern, but eventually it floods the whole thing, it becomes like a uniform and symmetric pattern regardless of the fact that it’s all been random,” he says.

“It ends up covering the whole ground.”

Looking at his finished work, it’s hard to imagine just how he started. That’s his real talent, taking something so governed by chance and making it look seamless.

Zac Koukoravas is currently exhibited by Flinders Lane Gallery, 137 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, 3000. He will be exhibiting a special commissioned work based on the topic of Melbourne for the gallery’s 25th anniversary, from September 16 to October 4. For more information on the exhibition and Zac Koukoravas, visit www.flg.com.au or www.zackoukoravas.com