The sculptural and conceptual work of David Mackaay offers an examination of a wide range of social and art historical references, which are being transformed into his own visual language. The last years he was exploring the phenome- non of inflicted necessity to be constantly optimizing oneself through sports, diets, surgery, time management. Going to a gym became part of a successful image and scaled up to the dimensions of a new belief. By creating sculptural interpretations of various fitness machines, such as a barbell bench, Mackaay uses stylistic elements from Gothic and Baroque. These are not quotations or appropriations, but rather products of an artistic process, that encodes the echo of those periods and translates it into the artist’s own vocabulary. The past and present are being reconfigured in a complex new system, where the elements seem familiar, but at the same time not known in this constellation.

One unifying aspect of Mackaay’s works is their shared dualism in search for harmony in sometimes seemingly imbalanced composition or material choice. On the other hand, the spotless innocence of the object’s appearance hides something dystopian and evil. Beauty and vicious silence coexist in a strange symbiotic relationship within the works. The objects are not necessarily site specific, but they interact with the surrounding and explore the boarders of sculpture as a medium. Never being exposed on a plinth, but rather embedded into the space, the sculptures provoke for interaction, that is hardly possible.