Christiane Peschek: GYM

About

The artistic practice of Christiane Peschek lives in between the physical and the digital, reality and the cloud. With a strong focus on fluid identity, self-sacralisation and body-screen relationship, Peschek questions and reinterprets our on- and offline identities. Creating elaborate, intimate experiences at the intersection of analog and digital, Peschek’s practice involves extended research into humans’ interaction with near-body technologies, such as smartphones and iPads, often transcending the artistic dimension to touch our most recondite essence.

In GYM, the artist’s first solo show at Virginia Bianchi Gallery, Peschek argues that body-optimising spaces like gyms, fitness clubs and yoga studios have come to replace temples and religious locations: they represent new places of devotion – from an all-mighty God to a self-worship culture. 

Moreover, blurring the distinctions between virtual space and corporeal presence, Peschek focused her research on the current wave of fitness and wellness apps, online platforms and mindful retreats we have found ourselves to be absorbed by due to the constrained passiveness of the pandemic. We have grown accustomed to practicing yoga in front of a screen, meditating through a dedicated app or following promising video workouts from Youtube, in continuous research for a godlike state of body and mind. 

In this newly created interdependence between virtual spaces, physical body enhancement and mindful living, GYM gives the opportunity to enter in contact with one’s extended digital body and to reach complete physical and spiritual awareness. 

The show consists of a virtual, 10-minute workout visitors are invited to experience repeatedly, as a ritual. Conceived as a minimally designed space with multi-sensory elements, the exhibition space has been built to stimulate the visitors to extend their physical bodies and be reshaped in the virtual realm. Similarly, the multilayered design mirrors a deepening of the visitors’ personal experience in the space: on an ethereal, mystical background, the glowing circles hide additional elements that float in the virtual space and enhance the journey into the online present. Once the 10-minute experience has come to an end, we highly encourage you to continue the journey by scanning the QR code: it will give access to EDEN, Peschek smartphone retreat.

The experience of GYM also includes a series of online sessions visitors are invited to attend: increasing in complexity and spiritual depth, the three events will provide you with an interactive demonstration of how to make use and engage with the space of the exhibition. 

In GYM, visitors are encouraged to transcend the borders of the virtual gallery and let their identity be absorbed by a space of nothingness, of contemplation and intimate healing, abandoning their body to levitate in virtuality.