Muscle Bound is an exhibition inspired by my fascination with the construction of ideal masculine images and identities. I have always been intrigued by the representation of the “strong man” archetype. The He-man action figures I played with as a child, the comic book superheroes I read about as an adolescent, and the movie characters such as Hercules, Rambo and Tarzan that I have watched throughout the course of my life all epitomize an “ideal” man as imagined through American values. While all of these characters have other heroic attributes that contribute to their strength, it is their physical form that reinforces or gives proof of their power.

The notion of the ideal “built” body as a representation of strength and might has been cherished since ancient times, as is evidenced by Greek and Roman sculptures. The value of a strong built body has been reinforced and made into a collective desire through contemporary institutions: professional sports organizations, fashion magazines, covers of romance novels, action movies, professional wrestling, and competitive body building. Eugen Sandow, one of the first bodybuilding stars, reinforced this connection to Greek and Roman classicism in his guidebook Bodybuilding, Or Man in the Making from 1904 wherein he recommended that bodybuilders cover themselves in white powder to replicate the alabaster tone of marble statues. Bodybuilders work to create a physique that is classical and controlled; not natural, but carved, chiseled, taut, and symmetrical.

It is within the world of competitive body building that I have placed the constructed characters of Muscle Bound. It is a world that was first introduced to me through George Butler and Robert Fiore’s 1976 film Pumping Iron, which has become a major influence for me in regards to this series. Though it has been thirty years, Butler and Fiore’s film exposes the contradictions that seem to be inherent to the body building community – a close knit homosocial brotherhood that exists only for and through competition and antagonism.

The muscle-men of Muscle Bound were built through photography and digital collage processes. I photographed several men, both friends and strangers, with physiques that would be considered by contemporary American standards to be less than ideal. By photographing small portions of their bodies, de-constructing them in a sense, I could then digitally put them back together again and make them fit the mold. With iconic images from pop culture and art history as my blueprints, I creatively exaggerated each model to construct the beefy frankensteinian characters in the exhibition. These figures have been measured and shaped to perfection, yet the surface reveals flawed individuality and shortcoming when compared to the unattainable “standard.” Frozen in an eternal pose-off, these muscly men struggle to out-perform their closest rivals.