Alex Ebstein “Fad Bodies”

VICTORI + MO

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VICTORI + MO presents Fad Bodies, an exhibition of new mixed media constructions from Alex Ebstein. Fad Bodies builds on the artist’s series of large-scale yoga mat sculptural abstractions and introduces two freestanding mixed media sculptures consisting of tables displaying Yoni Eggs, a gemstone meditation egg for women. For the first time, Ebstein is presenting her work as an installation, creating a tangible environment where in which her 2D pieces can exist. Covering the gallery floor with yoga mats and installing ballet bars as functionless accents to the space, discipline and perfection become part of a larger branded aesthetic.

Reflecting a progressive shift in the artist’s overall practice, this installation features abstractions sourced from the body and demonstrates a gradual separation from her intimate relationship with paper and small-scale drawings. Subsequent to her diagnosis of glaucoma and the multiple surgeries to save her vision that followed, Ebstein had an artificial lens placed in her eyes resulting in long-term vision aberrations that landed her somewhere between near and far sightedness. This was the catalyst for her work becoming increasingly tactile.

Ebstein’s wall-bound pieces, presented as painting, are made with hand-cut yoga mats and powder-coated aluminum forms bolted to the image’s picture plane. Gaps between the pieces of mat reveal the painting beneath the collaged surface and emphasize the imperfect presence of the hand.

The exhibition’s main sculptural assemblage, ceramic pieces presented on tile topped tables made by the artist, hold Yoni Eggs. These nest-like display structures investigate the aesthetics of marketing accessory and adornment — superfluous objects associated with the body.

An additional side effect of glaucoma, Ebstein found she could no longer practice yoga. The move to mats as material in her pieces started as a physical act of separation. Acting as a synthetic proxy for the body, the pieces participate in a consideration of the body in design, a simultaneous absence/presence of functionality and the standard assumed proportions it serves. Ultimately Fad Bodies creates an analog to spaces hyper-tuned to the body, like the gym, sauna or dance studio, yet one devoid of utility. They suggest bodies on display even as they are not present.

Alex Ebstein is an artist, curator, and critic based in Baltimore, MD. She received her BA in Studio Art from Goucher College in 2007 and a MFA from Towson University in 2015. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows at Cuevas Tilleard in New York, NY and Frutta Gallery in Rome, Italy. Recent group exhibitions include The Shared Patio at Greenpoint Terminal Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; After Image at Loyal Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden; Jade at Central Park in Los Angeles, CA; and Implicit Horizon at Mixed Greens in New York, NY.