Mirrored Fiction
Gagosian, Rome
From February 11, 2026 until April 11, 2026
They are not statues. Or at least, not in the way we are used to thinking of a statue. At Gagosian in Rome, Mirrored Fiction opens with a shock to the senses: a man in grimy shorts holds a squeegee, a woman stares into the void, a bodybuilder wipes sweat from his brow with a towel. There is no pedestal separating us from the scene. Duane Hanson’s hyperreal figures are monuments to the mundane, to labor and fatigue. Ordinary bodies that, once transported into the neutral space of the gallery, suddenly become political. Hanson models them in bronze, paints them with painstaking precision, yet what truly takes shape is our discomfort standing alongside them. Where does representation end? And why do we feel observed by those who, in theory, should be objects of our gaze?
In the gallery’s oval space, Window Washer occupies the center like a structural axis. Around him, layers of other narratives unfold. Andreas Gursky’s monumental photograph expands the field: from the individual to the system, from a minimal gesture to a vast political machine. Hanson focuses on skin; Gursky on the social architecture that contains it. And in between, the visitor, invited to navigate the delicate balance between empathy and critical distance.
Opening Image: INSTALLATION VIEW, ARTWORKS FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: ANDREAS GURSKY "POLITIK II", 2020, DUANE HANSON "WINDOW WASHER", 1984
“My art is not about fooling people. It’s the human attitudes I’m after—fatigue, a bit of frustration, rejection. To me, there is a kind of beauty in all this.”
Moving further into the exhibition, we encounter reflection. The famous mirrored surface of Jeff Koons’ Donkey captures the viewer and folds them into the work itself. It’s an almost narcissistic moment: we search for ourselves in the polished metal and find a distorted, dazzling, playful image of our own reflection on such an extravagant surface. In contrast, Hanson’s Bodybuilder—tense muscles, artificial tan, and weary expression—reveals the other side of identity construction. The body as project, as performance, as commodity. If Koons celebrates the image of the self and desire, Hanson exposes its labor and vulnerability. The presence of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Adam McEwen, and Bruce Nauman among the exhibition’s leading figures further amplifies the tension between reality and fiction. Each work seems to suggest that the “real” is never fixed, but a territory constructed through everyday rituals. Reality is never innocent or instantaneous; rather, it is always the product of mediation.
The title Mirrored Fiction comes alive the moment we grasp its clever wordplay: fiction is not the opposite of reality, but its reflected double. Hanson demonstrates this by freezing an ordinary moment until it vibrates with meaning; the other artists reinforce it by multiplying planes, surfaces, and systems of vision. One leaves the exhibition with the unsettling feeling that something has shifted, prompting us to question where we might be wrong—not so much in art itself, but in the way we look. Perhaps realism is not meant to reassure us, but to unsettle us—a role it has almost always played in art. Perhaps those still bodies are not there to be merely contemplated, but to offer us a less comfortable reflection of ourselves. And in that reflection, fiction becomes the most honest way to speak about the present.
For further information Gagosian.com.
