Dueling works create an ambiguous, ethereal space in “It’s a Muscle” at Tiger Strikes Asteroid. My visit was (merely) a suggestion of bodies surrounding me—soft echoes of motion and grunting. Curated by TSA Chicago members C.C. Ann Chen, Jaclyn Jacunski, and Frances Lee, artists Colleen Keihm and Rex Delafkaran float in the mysterious clouds of knowing glances and symbolic communications. The works divulge little—until they gush a semiotic deluge of body language.

        I scoot past a series of Delafkaran’s calligraphic, color pencil drawings. They long to touch one another—just a breath before the next in the descending series—to reach their bookend in Keihm’s darkroom prints. Their titles for the works begin the same: “Glossary.” It implies a dictionary of terms I have no examples to define at the moment; a very Jacquee Derrida-esque postulating. Although upright and framed in a traditional manner, the drawings and prints don’t walk straight—don’t have a direction for me to navigate. They detour.

        My Derridean detours face hindrances; Delafkaran’s For the Zoorkhanen sculptures are ripe for a grasp. Do I lift one, wince at the weight, and stare at Keihm’s photogram Bridge’s #1? For context, the “Zoorkhanen” is a weight in a traditional Iranian gym. It’s an ancient calisthenic, a combination of discipline to wield these objects for muscle growth and toning. In metaphysical thoughts, I pick one up (my squat to pick it up is corrupted by my already-sore back) and stare into a void. I stare into an in-between by Keihm’s caress; she kisses with non-objective forms and imprints crisp color. Holding Delafkaran, Keihm is a direct line with her brisk edges; yet even in crispness I wander and twist, now remembering the requisite calisthenic in this exhibition.

        I am now disciplined. My portal is available—and waiting— into their dichotomous world in the gallery. I kneel here, I jump there, I tilt my head at one skewed height of a Keihm print. Important to note: the gallery is not at sixty inches from center throughout; the heights differ, the installation is rhizomatic. It’s a jumbled word map: I circle a word, I draw a line to a synonym, I trace a line around the edge to an antonym. And now here I am—disciplined in metaphor. They are using the same shapes and forms as different silhouettes. Keihm shadows onto Delafkaran who spotlights a reticent bulb onto Keihm.

        With my gaze solidified, the perforations arise. Gaps and holes whirl in the remaining works of the gallery. While Delafkaran’s Zoorkhanen sculptures are ready for action, Holes for hands to slip through, where the floor meets the wall (heavy wallbase keychain) is not as welcoming. It’s a floor mat languorously stretched and a rug not wanting trampling at the same time. It’s an instrument of salutation, evocative of gym mats or yoga mats. The sculpture divides the space, creating a pulpit for Keihm’s prints on the wall behind. It becomes the viewers’ labor to decipher the stagnation of not being able to reach Keihm’s portal prints; it becomes potential energy, restrained. I imagine if I were to lay on the sculpture (downward dog?) and gaze to the left, I’d see Keihm’s print under the window and Delafkaran’s At the risk of reduction, membranes (every hole a portal) in the back left. Even though soft, the layers of fiber with holes punctured all the way through wake me-up. The curator flipped through them wantonly like layers of a draping scroll; its layers revealed themselves. The act of shuffling through the fibers was a tactile experience I now compared to my knowledge of Keihm’s practice. Keihm is also a painstaking shuffler similar to this act; she thumbs color into layer after layer and only reveals the dust of imprints that remains.

        I remind myself: this is evidence of the process: of straining for a near-transcendent euphoria post-work. Keihm covets darkness in her process; she labors alone, sans-outside world in a darkroom. She’s acutely non-social in practice, layer after layer of photographic tools used to expose color fields without outside influence. On display now, she’s winking with her own subtextual, subliminal thoughts; the works are coy. Delafkaran remains rapturous; enmeshed in a history of gyms and athletic performance wherein not everybody is allowed in. It’s here I find them to be antonymical yet using the same metonym. Their metonyms are perpendicular to their metaphors. These objects, charged with social and non-social aspects, are stand-ins for both artists’ physical and cultural practice. They’re both culling from gathering spaces for self-realization in art and life yet reflect on how they always can be punctured by outside influences: whether Keihm absorbing flashing colors in the world or Delafkaran letting wood absorb the oils of history. With the philosophy of Derrida and idea of non-social social spaces, their separate stories fully embrace.

        “It’s a Muscle” is a delicate dance; together, the artists whimsically sweat. It’s an effusive sweat, however: mopped quickly from a squinting forehead (my own forehead is pleasurably wrinkled now). Their breaths are parallel with fruitful, adventitious branches crossing in a beautiful courtship. I seek exhibitions like this; at first, I thought it was a dictionary, but it’s really a thesaurus. The exhibition allows breathing between stretching to the metaphysical, and I’m allowed to take my own journey here to something more solid.

        This exhibition says: hard work and pain can lead to exaltation. “It’s a Muscle” is that underground of seemingly shy communications, and the artists want the viewer to grasp and gasp at this semiotic murmur. That’s not to say it’s an arduous experience, though. It’s pushing myself at the gym and letting out a gratified sigh. “Yes, I did it.” But there’s no atrophy of my art-brain muscles here. The artists propose training the body’s tendons for strain. In the end, the glossary-turned-thesaurus was merely the entrance to the after. To sensuous stretching.

Samuel Schwindt , a word | object | surface-smith, originates from an evangelical community and contradictory\ motorcycle culture in Indiana. He honed skills in wood and metal and used his craft history to receive a BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from University of Illinois at Chicago. He works as commission-based leather-gear crafter, archivist, sculptor, curator, freelance writer, and educator.