PUSH-UP

For Push-up, an installation of 14 photographs and one slideshow-projection, Kruithof asked business people to perform as many push-ups as they could at the entrance of large corporation buildings in New York.  She continued to photograph them, until security guards told her to leave for liability reasons.

Push-up is not the only work in which Kruithof explores New York City’s business world and its people. However, it is the first piece to address the complex, multi-layered notions of power in an explicit, yet symbolic, and particularly playful way.

Who are the one actually in charge — the artist directing her participants, the participants themselves while performing their acts of strength in front of the companies they work for, the security guards who ultimately determine the end of the performance, the corporations? This circular power-movement of seeing and being seen is reflected in the installation’s presentation.

Kruithof perceives her circle-, or even clock-like arrangement of 14 images of men in different suits and different stages of push-up movements, as a repetitive chain within or model to illustrate the modern business world and mindset. The slideshow-projection that is projected into an empty picture frame emphasizes the humorous, ironic light that Kruithof sheds on the psychosocial state of New York’s contemporary (business world) society.