BEACH BODIES

Caitlin Albritton

Zabar Project Gallery

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Culled from her ongoing Gym Series, Albritton’s colorful, awkward, and very funny paintings ultimately offer a profound commentary on the lengths people will go to in search of the perfect body. Also exhibited for the first time are pieces from her Rock Solid Bodies collection of sterling silver and stone inlay pieces, a play on the absurdity of having a rock solid gym-forged body by crafting bodies out of rocks.

sponsored by Key West Fine Art Printing & Photography

FROM THE ARTIST:

The work in this exhibition will be current work from my Gym Series. To me, the gym is a place where everyday antics and behaviors are amplified in a stage-like environment where there is a hyperawareness of our bodies in a public space. Exploring the politics of looking through both male and female gazes, I’m interested in exemplifying the strangeness of the body, and the peculiarity of certain gym exercises and the awkward, compromising, sometimes sexual positions they put people in.

My works hinge on the contradiction that I am an active participant of #gymlife, while also questioning its variables. By telling gym stories through serious yet comically empathetic visual narratives, my work is meant to bring up conversation about gender issues, body politics and trends, competition, the machinic-like work we do, and the propaganda of progress in other spheres of our lives.

Also exhibited for the first time are my Rock Solid Bodies Collection of sterling silver and stone inlay pieces. Inlay is a metalsmithing and lapidary technique akin to collaging with hand-cut semi-precious stones. Conceptualizing jewelry processes, I wanted to play with the absurdity of having a rock solid gym-forged body by crafting bodies out of rocks. This technique is an ideal way to create wearable paintings that have the ability to essentially bring a gallery to the street, which is even more important in post-COVID times when people perhaps aren’t visiting galleries as frequently.

The title “Beach Bodies” refers to gym propaganda that creates anxiety around our own vessels being “unprepared” for summer. I feel that these works are especially good to place in tropical paradise like Key West to accentuate the implications of this phrase.