Zac Yeates (b. 1997, Australia) resides and works in Vilnius, Lithuania. Yeates captivates viewers with his modern approach to art, using airbrushing techniques to create almost digital-like paintings.
Drawing inspiration from the ordinary and the idiosyncrasies of everyday life, he mirrors the quirks of the world and the ups and downs of existence. Seamlessly blending the absurd and the comic in his work, he navigates through the intricacies of identity, body image, and challenges of everyday life.
The work is focused on personification, identity, and the human form. Characterised by disproportionate physical features, where the lips and eyes shape the entirety of the face. The paintings are constructed like collages, built up by fragments from different sources such as magazines and social media. These elements combine to form a cohesive whole, much like how our identities are shaped by various inputs, including online media, immersion in pop culture, and diverse experiences. The figures take on a reflection of the strangeness inherent in our contemporary era.
Launching your white Toyota Prius off a curb into a tree and watching it slowly catch fire, grown men dressed up as Batman getting into heated debates on which Batman is the best, washing away your tears in the shower, being born with a Jesus tattoo. What do these have in common? Not much. But there's an absurd and unpleasant feel to these doom case scenarios in which one might say under their breath “I’m toast”.
Toast to Being Toast celebrates our resilience in the face of uncertainty and our ability to persist through moments of crisis and confusion. There is an unsettling presence of our contemporary world, with its rapid technological advancements, division and unpredictability. It delves into our own feelings of being “toast” in the depths of human experience through moments of failure and defeat.
Toast to Being Toast invites you to confront and cope with these complexities of our life while celebrating and finding comfort amidst the chaos.
Toasts are reserved for weddings and parties, urging us to celebrate and honour joyous occasions. Toast to Being Toast is about celebrating and honouring not only the good but also the challenges and setbacks of life, toasting to the moments where things go wrong, where we feel defeated or completely ruined.
Next time you're riding your horse into the sunset and only realise halfway that it’s a mushroom cloud from a large explosion, you can Toast to being Toast.
Opens Thursday 9th May at 6:00pm
