Fitness Equipment Inspires Modern Art Installations

New art exhibitions now center exercise equipment, with artists reimagining what it means to work out as fitness becomes a cornerstone of modern lifestyles

Fitness has now entered the modern art world, in a new evolution of the growing sociocultural influence of working out inside gyms.

Several art installations have recently featured exercise equipment, including “Physical Culture,” currently on display at Nottingham Contemporary in the U.K. Lithuanian artist Augustas Serapinas created an interactive installation that transforms the gallery into a hybrid gym, drawing studio and performance space.

Serapinas modified fully operational fitness machines with sculptures instead of conventional weights, meant to convey the message of the discipline it takes to sculpt both art and the body through fitness.

But visitors can go beyond testing out the equipment during a quick visit — the gallery is also offering one-on-one 30-minute personal training sessions using the exhibit, organized by fitness coach July Styles.

In New York City, meanwhile, Pioneer Works just closed an exhibition titled “ANIMAL [a listening gym],” which reimagined fitness equipment as interactive sonic sculptures. 

Created by artist and composer Ash Fure in collaboration with architect Xavi L. Aguirre, the installation was meant to play on the unique spatial and behavioral qualities of gyms, with a focus on the sounds of friction, pressure and movement of exercise equipment.

Fure, known for installation-performances that challenge conventional ideas of music, used spatialized audio and amplified frequencies through the steel structures while inviting viewers to press, lean, lift and listen. 

He took particular interest in forms of collective experience through shared sensation rather than speech — highlighting the sounds people have grown accustomed to on a daily basis in the gym, a cultural touch point of universally shared experiences while working out beside strangers.

“The gym and the club are two of the only cultural containers I know that invite a kind of private/public, alone/together intensity,” Fure said. “No pressure to perform the self through words; just the body and its edges, the energy and its limits, each on their own adrenaline ride.”