Augustas Serapinas: Aerobics of Display

Students were producing a lot
of art – most of it just sat in
storage, untouched for years.
So I took some of it, repurposed
it into gym equipment.

Augustas Serapinas on the project’s first version, made in his third year at the Vilnius Academy of Arts

Defne Ayas: ‘Physical Culture’, presented at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius in early 2025, was the latest and most expansive version of Augustas Serapinas’s ongoing project involving functioning gym equipment cast from classical sculptures. The presentation functioned as a statement of performance, almost in the ilk of an intervention on how art spaces should function. In what ways do you see the expanded version resonating specifically with Vilnius, its publics, its performance histories, and its spatial politics?

Physical Culture, activated installation view. Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) Vilnius 2025. Photo: Jonas Balsevičius

Neringa Bumblienė: Serapinas’s interactive exhibition at the CAC was a new iteration of the work that the artist started in 2012. Since then, its various versions have been exhibited at major international contemporary art platforms, including Unlimited at Art Basel in Switzerland (2023), 1857 in Oslo (2017), B.tard performance art festival in Brussels (2016), and Frieze art fair in London (2016). The CAC edition was the larger among them and covered 1,000 square metres, featuring newly produced, fully operational fitness machines where replicas of plaster sculptures replaced conventional weights.

The artwork is inspired by Serapinas’s experience as a student at the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art in Vilnius, where art education follows a classical methodology emphasising life drawing and the mastery of painting and sculpture techniques. Revisiting the school’s archives, Serapinas reconstructed copies of his own student work, as well as plaster models once used for drawing classes. The exhibition included replicas of well-known sculptures, such as Michelangelo’s David and the Apollo Belvedere, which have long been considered exemplars of Classical Antiquity.

The installation was activated by both individuals practicing academic drawing – traditionally focused on copying classical sculptures – and groups of visitors who engaged with the artwork as a functioning gym. Audiences had the opportunity to take a closer look at Western art history and rethink local education systems, which emphasise repetitive practice and diligent, hard work – paralleled here with the discipline of working out in a gym.

For this project, we established at least two meaningful collaborations. First of all, with the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art, whose students came weekly to practice their drawing skills as part of their regular curriculum. And with the sports club Re.Formatas, whose members came to work out at the exhibition instead of going to the sports club. There were various activities proposed for both drawing and sports classes, available to visitors with a regular entry ticket.

While working with these collaborators, we offered the exhibition space as a platform for their activities, but didn’t give specific instructions – instead, we remained open to their visions and needs. It’s also important to note that, although the exhibition raised critical questions about practices within both institutions – the art school and the sports club – its critique was nuanced. Rather than making declarative statements, it invited participants to be and think together, to consider alternative perspectives, and perhaps find better ways of functioning in society.

Physical Culture, activated installation view. Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) Vilnius, 2025. Photo: Dovaldė Butėnaitė

DA: The exhibition encouraged a rereading of Western art history through embodied interaction. How do you see this contributing to broader conversations about destabilising the canon? How did the CAC situate this exhibition within its broader mission to interrogate (Lithuanian) art education, cultural memory, and performance practice? What opportunities did this exhibition open for public programming or pedagogical engagement within the institution?

NB: This project tested the art institution itself – how porous and flexible it is, and how well its teams are prepared for an exhibition that demands such a high intensity of labour and care. But I think we managed quite well. It was great to see such a varied profile of visitors and to observe how much satisfaction, contemplation, and simple joy the project was able to offer. I think this was quite unique, not only for the CAC’s programme, but also for the wider art field in the city.

DA: Can physical engagement be considered a form of critical thinking or art historical inquiry? In both art education and gym culture, the notion of ‘discipline’ is central. How might we reimagine discipline to be more inclusive, fluid, or imaginative across these domains?

Augustas Serapinas, Physical Culture, activated installation view. Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) V ilnius, 2025. Photo: Dovilė Markevičienė

NB: I guess modernity – and Western thought more broadly – focused too much on the brain, forgetting that it is actually located in a body. Today, many thinkers and practitioners are questioning this and returning agency to the body as an extended brain. So, yes, I see physical engagement as an important feature of contemporary art within museums and art centres, and a way of rethinking our rather rigid cultural heritage.

There was also a question of gender present in the exhibition. If you looked closely, all the Classical Antiquity examples given to the art school students – and thus to the artist – to copy were male protagonists. Obviously, many female bodies and faces existed in the art of that era, but for some reason, they were mostly absent in the art school, and therefore later in the exhibition. An interesting discussion arose during the press tour, when one prominent critic and curator implied that it might be natural – because male faces are supposedly easier to copy due to their more pronounced features, which I think is a dangerous path to proceed along, but it’s a good example of how certain agendas tend to survive, even within critical milieus.

What we did, at the very least, was ensure that the crowd who came to work out and draw in the exhibition were more gender balanced. To my great surprise, I learned that nearly seventy percent of the sports club’s members were women, and half of their coaching team as well.

And speaking of discipline, it requires a certain dedication and persistence. It’s not something easily built along the way, nor is it easily found in our accelerated, consumeristic society. I saw the exhibition and the challenge it posed to the steady work of the institution as an exercise in imagining a discipline of inclusion, fluidity, and imagination across domains.

DA: Does Serapinas’s work suggest that our cultural fixation on form, whether in art or the body, is ultimately a gesture of performance?

NB: I believe it’s important to comprehend that no form is final; it didn’t land here from the heavens. Everything is a construction, often serving certain interests and power structures. So, yes, to some extent, it is a performative gesture, a disclosure of the different games at play.

DA: How does your curatorial mission bridge physical performance, institutional critique, and broader cultural narratives?

NB: I guess I’m quite promiscuous and experimental in my practice. My first education was in product design, and only later did I drift into the curatorial. I’ve been working at the CAC since 2014, but I’ve also done many projects outside the institution, including curating the inaugural Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art and engaging with various audiences both locally and abroad. So, I am not particularly concerned with canons or grand histories. For me, art is truly a means to better understand this world – and to find a way to survive it. So, I see the closed and heavily encoded contemporary art practices both alluring and deeply problematic, and I believe that I tend to question them, which is not an easy, but certainly an interesting way to be.