Context
Daniel Westfield is an American visual artist.
Previous Work
Gymnós, 2015, acrylic on gym mat, 96” X 48”.
Westfield used the demanding nature of calisthenic movements to make marks. Wooden plinths and gym mats recorded the residue of movement via erosion at contact points and body imprints, respectively. Exploring one's capability and the outward expression of this potential in the form of feats of endurance and strength was Westfield's concern. Richard Long's A Line Made By Walking used his footsteps to temporarily alter the surrounding English countryside. In walking back and forth, Long realized the potential in this simple, repetitive activity to birth form. In Yves Klein's Anthropometrie paintings the torso of nude models was employed as a human paintbrush. These notions of the body as a tool for mark-making resonated with Westfield's endeavor to alter surfaces with repetitious, taxing effort, thereby creating a chronicle to the simultaneously grueling and rewarding experience of movement.
Can You Hang, 2013-2016, steel pull-up bar and aluminum dibond print, 30” X 46” X 30”.
Located mere feet away from a bus stop on the streets of Philadelphia, Westfield created twenty-four hour public access to a pull-up bar. This piece of unsanctioned Relational Art questioned social norms regarding where, when, and how we exercise. Karl Marx termed interstice as any type of exchange outside of capitalism. Building on that, Nicholas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics, published in 1998, characterized yet to be codified art that was free and available to all in the 1990s as social interstice. Bourriaud describes Relational Art as a "set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space" (Bourriaud 113). Westfield was espousing exercise need not be relegated to specific zones (e.g. gyms, one's home, or alongside running/bike trails), rather one can move anywhere, even at a bus stop. An accompanying sign welcomed all by playfully begging the question — can you hang?
Chair, 2012, performance.
Along with camera equipment and provisions, Westfield carried a sofa chair approximately 33 miles from Philadelphia, PA to Wilmington, DE over the course of 32 hours and 56 minutes in late November. This was Westfield's take on a self-portrait; a backbreaking performance in which his body was pushed past its perceived limits in between self-timer shots in the chair.