‘We want escapism to be realistic and we demand perfection in reality,’ Uzelac writes. ‘We applaud vocabulary, fashion, and enthusiasm. We shun the forms of which we don’t approve. All the while, good and bad get done right under our noses. We only realize when it’s too late.’

Uzelac’s largest work is laid out in the middle of the gallery, lifted off the floor on a series of milk crates. The painting is divided, with one half representing the pre-internet age and the other the present day. The colours intensify the closer it gets to the present, as if our lives are getting painfully brighter each year, until they become completely artificial, bearing no leftover colours, metaphorically speaking, from nature.

every nerve and memory is utterly painful, but ffs go get your groceries 2020, pencil and pastel on salvaged paper, 36 x 23cm (photograph by David Akerman)

It’s a common theme. In each of Uzelac’s works, the fluorescent dashes of paint seem joyous at first glance, but between the paint strokes are found tiny words relating to loss and pain. To see and understand them, you have to lean in close to them, as if listening to someone telling you a secret. The secret, it turns out, is something you might not want to hear.

One work comprises two pizza boxes. The first was created at the start of a relationship and the second at the end. Each is drenched in neon paint, with words of love and pain written in the white spaces between them, like mirrored emotions, felt distantly, years apart. The word BRUTAL appears on the breakup box beside a set of unread text messages beside it, that iconic modern symbol of the end of days.

Two nudes hang on the far wall. They are selfies recreated as paintings. A young man and woman photograph themselves in front of a mirror, phones in hand. Their bodies are contorted, under that same neon hue, a glow that suggests an even greater nudity than the mere loss of clothing. They are stripped bare, both physically and spiritually. As Kandinsky put it, ‘Colour is a means of exerting direct influence on the soul.’

And what colours are influencing us today? The colours of the screen. The ever-present glow of blue and yellow lights that exert just such an influence.The phone camera and the Instagram filter. They emit a glow we cannot escape, one that captures and captivates us with the escapism it promises to achieve but never quite delivers.

On another wall, one of Uzelac’s works tells the story of an app that does nothing, one that millions of people have used for years, for no reason. The question as to why hangs heavily in the air, but Uzelac offers no answer.

Saxon Strauss, owner of the Art Syndicate Gallery, is dedicated to exhibiting this kind of transgressive art, the sort created by young artists like Uzelac, who seek to challenge the mainstream way of seeing the world. ‘We welcome the misfits!’ Saxon says loudly at one point in the middle of the exhibition.

Looking around the gallery, I can see what he means. The crowd is younger and more diverse than the usual Sydney art scene. ‘I want this to be a welcoming space. I want art to be accessible to everyone, not just the rich. There is a reason why the price point is lower than other galleries.’

Six of us are present on the night in question. We sit in a circle around his desk, admiring the art but also the fact that a place like this even exists. In this small, white, industrial room, it is okay to be madly creative, or lost, or searching for answers. Strauss wants artists not especially welcome elsewhere to have a place here; he wants people who aren’t in the art scene to appreciate art in this space. On his desk lies a journal, over two thousand pages in length, which he intends to fill with conversations between people in the gallery. He wants to capture a sense of the people who appear here, night after night – the ones who wander in, lost in the glamour of Sydney's nightlife, searching for something real. In an ironic nod to this, the sign at the door reads simply: Buy art, not bags. It’s almost too Instagrammable.

As the night sets over the city, offers are made on Uzelac’s paintings, and the lost souls of the city find something they didn’t know they were seeking.

Gregory Uzelac: Nice Is Different Than Good is showing at the Art Syndicate in Surry Hills, NSW, from 25 March to 10 May 2021.

This review is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.