Drawing on Susan Bordo’s analysis of the disciplined body and Michel Foucault’s concept of docility, the exhibition considers how fitness culture enforces ideals of control, efficiency, and self-surveillance. Within these spaces — often sterile, mirrored, and relentlessly repetitive — the human form is subjected to regimens not unlike those of industrial labor, yet rebranded as liberation.

As Rem Koolhaas writes in Junkspace, such environments are seductive but hollow — designed more for consumption than transformation. The gym, like the shopping mall, promises transcendence through repetition, wrapping bodily maintenance in sleek design. These are spaces where time seems suspended, yet every moment is data: steps tracked, calories counted, sweat commodified.

The artists in WORKOUT engage these contradictions, often by embodying them. Some turn to performance and endurance — echoing Amelia Jones’ notion of the body as both subject and medium — while others critique the glossy fictions of digital fitness and image culture.