Art in General, New York
Total Body Conditioning is an exhibition comprised of three scenes—display, work, and fitness—that invoke technologies developed to control and affect the body. These are techniques that shape bodily experience of time and space, taking the human body as a target of power. The works in the exhibition include hot tub painting objects, a series of abstract woven textile portraits, and transparent paintings set to changing ambient lighting and sound sequences. Each scene in the exhibition traces the management of the body in different spaces and temporal contexts from factory assembly lines to therapeutic “after work” locations.
The exhibition takes its name from a physical conditioning program developed to adapt the body to an exercise regimen emphasizing endurance, flexibility, and performance through the seriation of time and the partitioning of bodily space. Total Body Conditioning refers to the complete investment of the body, taking the Greek practice “to care for oneself” into the Foucauldian register of discipline and control exacted on the self—where individual practices of freedom are intertwined with modes of domination.
Created specifically for the exhibition, Lucite cast acrylic sheet hot tub painting objects that are reverse-spray enameled in saturated gradient colors ground the gallery space. These new hot tub objects are ergonomically molded to the human form, underlining how the body is articulated in relation to an object. The invention of the hot tub began out of an aviation company, which later developed hydraulic pumps for medical therapy before evolving into a social recreation with its multi-seat tubs. Here the tub form acts as a container for the body and paint, fusing figuration with abstraction.
Catalog.
