EROICA

Oliver Westermeier

May 14 - June 6, 2009

The collages in EROICA are filled with bodies—and not just any body, mind you—but the specifically steroid induced sculpted manifestation of male pride. The artist Oliver Westermeier describes his “Bodybuilder” series as a “riff on the Western fetish of the human body when it is shaped to its outermost limits.” In each image there are many cultural attributions, but none is more essential than the shiny and sinewy forms of hyper-masculine skin and muscles, which constantly interject into Westermeier’s surreal commonplace an element of humanity straining to be most like a machine.