SADE is pleased to present FLESHMAXXING, an exhibition by Kristin Reger and Maggie Petroni, curated by Bryan Munguia. 

FLESHMAXXING exists in a bunker of unconscious dysmorphia, where amorphous entities coalesce into stretched sinews and petrified silks. Found objects scatter throughout the space to expose their memories of abused consumption. This disorienting theater is built by the carcasses of wooden canvas frames, staging penetrations to the body and psyche to reveal transmutations through new flesh.

The artists intentionally engage with the materiality of their works, embracing a McLuhanesque understanding that meaning resides within the “medium” of its message. Reger offers a masterclass in material fleshmaxxing, capturing contorted anatomies suspended in a primordial meditation. Her taut creations, supported by chaotic networks of butcher hooks and bungee ropes, stretch ossified flesh to the brink of rupture. These intricate systems mirror the cybernetic infrastructure of modern society—a web of deformities modeled after the pervasive influences of the internet. 

Beneath Reger’s ascended relics, clusters of ceramic worms and dysfunctional forms complement Petroni’s monuments of upcycled materials. Petroni subverts the original commercial utility of her found objects by reconfiguring products into paranoid sigils possessing symbolism and invasive advertising. She uses objects of common culture to trace a genealogy of hyper-consumerism scaled to the velocity of evolving technologies. This framework positions our commodified culture as the prime fuel for social mania. Surveying our overconsumption, viewers are confronted with the side effects of dysmorphia transmitted through the algorithmic forces of a technocratic society.  

In FLESHMAXXING, Reger and Petroni’s works converge to create a collective entity. The exhibition is an experimental collaboration between the artists, blurring the lines between installation and sculpture that traverses non-physical spaces such as “anonymous” webpages and targeted social media campaigns. The installation is designed to violate the senses, using video, audio, sculpture, and collage to induce a state of psychosis that examines our corporal relationship to consumer object rituals. Ultimately, the act of fleshmaxxing fuses anatomy and commodification as a singular symbiotic network.