‘Soft Gym’ is the title of a large-scale art installation that has replaced a former bank building on North Avenue as part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ $1 million ‘Inviting Light’ initiative to help revitalize the Station North Arts and Entertainment District.
Artists Daniel Wickerham and Malcolm Lomax are putting the finishing touches on their art work, which will be unveiled to the public during a free public event starting at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 12, at 101 W. North Ave.
‘Soft Gym’ is one of five outdoor art installations curated by Derrick Adams for Inviting Light – a Public Art Challenge project sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies and facilitated by the Central Baltimore Partnership in conjunction with the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Culture and Entertainment and the Neighborhood Design Center.
All of the pieces are expected to be in place for at least a year. ‘Soft Gym,’ the most architectural of the five, replaces the KAGRO building, a former modernist bank turned office building that was covered with graffiti before it was torn down last year.
“Part playground, part training ground, ‘Soft Gym’…transforms the landscape into a surreal 3,825-square-foot-exercise-arena where the physical, emotional, and social intertwine,” reads a media advisory from the Central Baltimore Partnership.
“At once gym, sculpture, and social experiment, ‘Soft Gym’ invites visitors to consider how shared environments shape us — how we perform, support, and stretch one another”
In the artists’ words
The artists, who go by Wickerham & Lomax, talk about the design in a dialogue on their website, www.duoxduox.com.
DAN: When we started designing Soft Gym, we thought it’d be another outdoor commission, a park, a few sculptures, maybe a place to rest. But it became something else. It’s more like a rehearsal space for public feeling.
MALCOLM: Yeah, it’s not a gym for fitness; it’s a place where emotion, behavior, and manners get trained alongside muscle. The walls are padded, the surfaces are mirrored, everything’s reflecting some version of use.
DAN: There’s a story underneath it too. When you left home, your grandmother said, don’t forget, you’ll always be a country boy. Mine said, go reinvent yourself. The park sits between those two pieces of advice, what you inherit and what you invent.
MALCOLM: That tension…that’s the workout. The pressure of thousands of emails, city permits, and tiny negotiations; that’s how the gym became a gem.
DAN: We were looking at how art history handles bodies and surfaces. The gym rig, flipped on its side, became a kind of sunset, a landscape painting. A weight plate nods to Madonna and Child tondos, but also Janet Jackson’s jewelry from the Super Bowl. A devotional form retooled for Baltimore.
MALCOLM: And the pads…they’re a soft echo of Richard Serra. His Tilted Arc was meant to hide surveillance; ours shows what usually stays private, the post-workout locker-room gestures repeated until they turn sculptural. Serra, but gayer.
DAN: The behavior we design isn’t abstract (we draw on your experience); it’s in the touch, the lean, the glance. It’s in how people adjust themselves inside something reflective. We were thinking about how the physical becomes visual, and how image becomes touch again. Gum on stools, sweat printed on light boxes, embedded graffiti.
MALCOLM: We kept coming back to this idea that feeling is a kind of behavior; behavior rendered as a gesture or suggestion. Not a confession, but a way of moving, a rhythm. The park holds that… the repetition, the strain, the form learning itself.
DAN: It’s also about proximity. Between bodies, generations, even between seeing and being seen. Like manners, vulnerability becomes a kind of public currency here.
MALCOLM: Yeah, it’s a place where you can practice feeling in public; not to perform, but to stay in the rehearsal, the forever present.
Relaunch of the Ynot Lot
The property is owned by an affiliate of MCB Real Estate, which has long range plans to develop it, most likely for housing with commercial space at street level. MCB is making the land available on a short-term basis to the Central Baltimore Partnership for use as a new Ynot Lot, an outdoor events venue available for community-oriented programming, to replace the former Ynot Lot at the northwest corner of Charles Street and North Avenue.
The bank building that MCB acquired opened in 1961 was a branch of Maryland National Bank. Designed by Smith & Veale, it was one of the first examples of Modern architecture on North Avenue and one of the city’s first commercial structures with a precast concrete frame.
From 1995 to 2015, the building housed the Korean-American Grocers & Licensed Beverage Association of Maryland, KAGRO for short. In 2015, it was the setting for “Bubble Over Green,” an art exhibit featuring work by California artist Victoria Fu, organized by The Contemporary, a roving museum.
The work by Wickerham & Lomax is intended to draw people to the area and show what a reimagined Ynot Lot can be while MCB firms up its development plans.
The Nov. 12 celebration “marks not only the debut of the immersive and welcoming space but also the official re-launch of the Ynot Lot in its new location,” the Central Baltimore Partnership said in its advisory. “Once again it will serve as a performance pavilion for Station North programming.”
‘Creativity, community and connection’
The three Inviting Light art works that have already been unveiled this year are: Zoë Charlton’s ‘Third Watch’ at North Avenue Market, 10-30 W. North Ave.; Phaan Howng’s ‘Big Ass Snake (Plant)s On a Plane’at the Charles Street Garage, 1714 N. Charles St., and Tony Shore’s ‘Aurora’ at the former Gatsby’s nightclub, 1817 N. Charles St. A fifth work, by Ekene Ijeoma and called ‘Peacemaker,’ will occupy two vacant row house lots at 1707-1709 Barclay St., next to Barclay Park.
Additional support for Inviting Light has been provided by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Baltimore Community Foundation, BGE and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
The Nov. 12 program is curated by José Ruiz in collaboration with Catherine Borg and Maura Dwyer. Other contributors include MICA Curatorial Graduate Interns and Docents; Mobtown Ballroom; Baltimore Youth Arts; Motor House; Club Car; Guilford Hall Brewery; Metro Gallery, and the Central Baltimore Partnership and Neighborhood Design Center staffs.
The community celebration will last from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Remarks by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, representatives from Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the artists will begin at 6:15 p.m. Guided tours of the Inviting Light art installations will take place at 7, 7:30 and 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public but reservations are encouraged: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/soft-gym-opening-inviting-light-sites-celebration-tickets-1854913900409?aff=oddtdtcreator
“Inviting Light represents Baltimore’s creativity, community, and connection through light and art,” Scott said in a statement. “We saw a need to invest in lighting infrastructure in Station North, and thanks to our partners at Bloomberg Philanthropies, the vision of Derrick Adams and these talented artists, we were able to deliver these practical and beautiful installations.”
More information about Inviting Light and the North Avenue installation is at invitinglight.org and on Instagram @invitinglightbaltimore.
