Fitness in the Art Gallery: When David Becomes a Dumbbell

Augustas Serapinas’s ongoing project Physical Culture reconceives exhibition spaces as hybrid sites that combine a fitness gym, a life‑drawing studio and a performance venue. Rather than presenting static works behind ropes, Serapinas fits galleries with fully operational metal gym equipment. Visitors are invited not only to look but in many cases to participate: local fitness groups, life‑drawing classes and community wellbeing programmes are scheduled to use the installations. Institutional descriptions from Nottingham Contemporary and the Galeria Municipal do Porto characterise the project as an experiment in sharing museum infrastructure for bodily practices.

The strategy shifts the terms of engagement: the gallery is no longer only a place of visual contemplation but a space for embodied activity. By doing so, Serapinas’s work raises practical and conceptual questions about how museums can host activities that cross the cultural and recreational spheres and what it means to transform canonical objects into functional parts of everyday use.

Nottingham Contemporary stages Augustas Serapinas: Physical Culture from 6 June to 13 September 2026. According to the institution, two large gallery spaces are reorganised into a hybrid gym/drawing/performance environment. The installation includes fully functioning metal training machines; instead of conventional counterweights the gallery uses jesmonite sculptures. Nottingham also lists planned activations by local fitness groups, life‑drawing sessions and community programmes, indicating the show is conceived as a living, working environment rather than a conventional static exhibition.

The Porto edition at the Galeria Municipal do Porto runs from 11 July to 18 October 2026. The GMP states that the Porto Edition will transform the gallery into a mix of fitness studio and art school, hosting body‑building and fitness activities alongside drawing classes. For this iteration, the counterweights are replicas drawn from the collection of the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis. The gallery’s publicity refers to 'more than sixty replicas' and explicitly notes participation rules and safety regulations for those using the equipment.

Serapinas has developed versions of Physical Culture since about 2012; the format has been shown multiple times across Europe. A significant recent iteration took place at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius in 2025. Each edition adapts to its site: local replicas, the selection of sculptures and partnerships with community groups vary from venue to venue. This site‑specific adaptability is integral to the concept, making each presentation both a continuation and a new instantiation of the work.

The project engages with debates on reproduction and the recontextualisation of canonical forms. Nottingham’s materials mention replicas of well‑known sculptures — including references to Michelangelo’s David and the Apollo Belvedere — while Porto emphasises the use of local museum replicas. In both cases, the act of remaking canonical figures to serve as gym equipment becomes a deliberate provocation about the status and function of sculptural forms.

Presenting functioning gym equipment in an art institution raises a number of practical issues. Who is allowed to use the machines, and under what conditions? How are safety and liability handled when members of the public and external groups are invited to engage physically with an installation? The Galeria Municipal do Porto provides explicit participation conditions and safety rules; Nottingham lists planned activations by local organisations but does not publish a comprehensive list of participants or the complete operational rules on its main exhibition page.

Conservation and material questions also merit attention. Nottingham refers to jesmonite sculptures used as counterweights; Porto’s descriptions mention replicas from the Soares dos Reis collection. Public information does not include exhaustive technical specifications for individual replicas (for example, casting methods or reinforcement measures), which is why press officers and curators are recommended contact points for journalists seeking such detail.

Serapinas’s work reconfigures the hierarchical relations between object, institution and public. By inviting physical interaction with sculptural forms, Physical Culture blurs the line between reverent viewing and everyday use. For museums, this approach opens new audiences — fitness groups and participants who may not otherwise visit a gallery — and experiments with the social role of cultural sites as places for wellbeing and communal activity.

At the same time, it provokes critical reflections on value and appropriation. Some commentators argue that such performative reuse democratises access to canonical forms and makes them relevant to contemporary publics. Others caution that repurposing iconic imagery as functional elements risks trivialising historical works or provoking misinterpretation. The project intentionally positions itself within these tensions, using replication and reuse to prompt discussion rather than to offer simple answers.

It is confirmed that Nottingham Contemporary is showing Augustas Serapinas: Physical Culture from 6 June to 13 September 2026 with functional gym equipment and jesmonite sculptures used as counterweights. It is also confirmed that the Galeria Municipal do Porto is presenting Physical Culture: Porto Edition from 11 July to 18 October 2026, using replicas from the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis for the machines’ weights and mentioning 'more than sixty replicas' in its materials.

What remains less fully detailed in public materials are exact counts of replicas in every edition, exhaustive lists of scheduled activations and participants, and technical descriptions of the fabrication and reinforcement of the replicas. Newsrooms requiring precise numbers or technical specifications are advised to request those specifics from the press offices of Nottingham Contemporary and the Galeria Municipal do Porto or from the artist’s representatives. Both institutions typically provide press photography and rights information upon request.