Termine

The video installation Dark Fitness unfolds through the exhibition space along a sequence of four screens. Set in a fitness centre, a site of personal disciplinary regime and seemingly endless labour on the body, the work takes place at night, in the after hours, when the space has fallen into darkness and its usual occupants are gone. Filmed from various angles and distances, we observe two very different protagonists – the space itself and the dancer and choreographer Boris Charmatz – as they interact.

While echoes of its former order remain, the fitness center shifts into a hybrid space where other realities have entered. Moving through the dimly lit, empty gym, Charmatz adopts a series of identities and fragmented figures: a sportsman, someone seeking shelter, a wounded person, an urban nomad, a corporate employee, a security agent. The gym, once a fetishized and performative space, transforms into something else, giving way to an in-between state, where the boundaries between strength and weakness, activity and passivity, inside and outside, are blurred.

Charmatz’ body fluidly oscillates between behaviours: exercising, lying down, hiding, guarding, crawling, bursting in anger, tossing and turning, collapsing into stillness, etc. His physical presence, along with the unstable and fragmented nature of his movements renders him at times powerful and charged, yet often slow, exposed and vulnerable. Traces of war and violence infuse the various figures and resonate with the rigid discipline of the machines. By not using the equipment as usual Charmatz’ movements push the established order of the fitness centre into a crisis, allowing fragility and exhaustion to surface. The idled machines are no longer merely tools of control and exercise; the space becomes a place of refuge, of rest and unrest, of uncertainty.

Aernout Mik is known for his immersive spatial video installations, creating intense situations in which human behaviour and interaction unfold within unstable social contexts. Through his choreographed video works, the artist engages with sociopsychological and material structures that reflect the position of individuals and groups within contradictory or dysfunctional systems.