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

Revision

Alex Gawronski, Revision, 2026

‘Dimension’, curated by Liam Garstang and Alex Gawronski

(Hany Armanious / Alex Gawronski/ Newell Harry / Biljana Jancic / Anna John / Andrew Lavery / Michelle Nikou / Jacky Redgate / Tina Stefanou)

(plywood, timber, mdf, steel, styrofoam, paint. 600 x 320 x 45cm)

Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) Gallery, the University of Sydney

Retrospectively, Bruce Nauman’s practice provides an exemplary recent model of critical intellectual and artistic autonomy. Central to his practice were a series of constructed corridors. The first of these was a makeshift structure installed in the artist’s studio as a physical foil to a series of simple, repetitious performative actions. These were documented in the deliberate absence of an audience. Architecturally, Nauman’s corridors are blank, empty, void structures that reconfigure space via the narrow passage they uncannily introduce. More broadly, these pieces configure art as a series of quasi-absurdist propositions hinting at the precarious status of the artist and artwork in contemporary society; the artist cannot simply describe the world, nor can art provide a convincing parallel to the world outside art. The freedom of this work arises from its propositional testing of the limits of art within a framework where meaning and value are a priori regarded as irresolvably questionable. Art work grants the artist testing powers within the parameters they themselves establish. Nauman’s corridors attest to a model of art as an interior haven, an experimental laboratory insulated from the outside world. Nauman’s corridors are both constructive and protective inherently implying futurity as linear forward motion.

The corridor in Revision forces evidence of the ‘real world’ into this self-determined paradigm at a time of epochal violence. Core enlightenment myths are also central to myths of art’s presumed separation from everything it isn’t. Now, as Western imperial hegemony rapidly disintegrates, the enlightenment ceiling literally comes crashing in. The collapse is prefigured by imagery of wonton destruction and the acres of rubble that has filled our screens for the last three years, at least. Assuming conceptual neutrality within a situation of such profound material and ethical destruction, is untenable and disingenuous. Highlighting the conditions of this tectonic demise from within the comparative safety of art, nonetheless, exposes our recognition of the broader geopolitical and institutional stakes at play in the world today. Awareness of this either buries us or promises something better, albeit in the long run. Any worthy alternative will not be burdened by pervasive corrosive fantasies of occidental supremacy, by now irreparably exhausted.

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