A L E X G A W R O N S K I

Untitled (No Standing)

Alex Gawronski: Untitled (No Standing) (artist’s mock-up), 2011

‘Chain Letter’, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica California, US

curated by Christian Cummings and Doug Harvey (with Jane Polkinghorne)

(Vinyl lettering on concrete floor)

‘Chain Letter’, the exhibition for which this work was produced, was an exercise in both curatorial inclusion and democratic excess. A number of artists were asked by the show’s primary curators to select 10 artists they admired. The resulting exhibition was a mass amalgam representing a web of affiliated and/or competing artistic voices. Thus ‘Chain Letter’ could be seen to either celebrate multiplicity or to satirise myths of inclusion and the desperation of many artists to appear as insistently as possible. This text piece attached directly to the floor took such considerations into account. On the one hand, it humorously suggested the lack of gallery floor space remaining after installation of works had been completed. On the other hand, it commanded from the audience a much broader and paradoxical feat: to view the art on display without standing. Further questions were implicitly raised regarding the habits of ‘average’ viewers who distractedly graze artworks, a tendency emphasised and exacerbated by the curatorial mechanism of this exhibition.