From the exhibition press release:

Consider the life peddled to you - through pervasive cultural bias, gender stereotypes, and capitalism. The way your home looks, how you clothe yourself, access to nature and beauty. These are all topics ripe in the works of Alex Ebstein and Amy Boone-McCreesh. Dream Sellers examines the markers of success through the lens of societal pressures. Artists have long held mirrors to the worlds in which they live and Ebstein and Boone-McCreesh visually unravel what it means to exist today in a series of tactile, mixed media works. Topics including body shape preferences, advertising, slick store displays, and domestic life are pulled apart to question long held assumptions on class and the notion of upward mobility. 

Alex Ebstein’s work, created in small series, expands upon her work transforming yoga mats and powder coated metal into images of eyes, curves, limbs - literal and abstracted.  Much of the work has been made in a small, apartment studio since quarantine began and evinces a reflection of ad-punctuated virtual windows into the outside world in contrast with the solitary reality of an isolated routine.  Figments and artifacts of glamour and group fitness hover over tactile, surfaces, embellished with embroidery, acrylic and other materials.  In a world mediated through social media, aspiration and intention mingle with the dreamy, indulgent space of diary, time capsule and stasis. As the ways in which we interact are interrupted and reexamined, constraining pressures such as female competition and trends in health and beauty become flimsy symbols disengaged from their power to divide.

Alex Ebstein makes mixed media, tactile, abstractions using found, readymade and traditional materials - most notably yoga mats.  Her work borrows materials used in gym equipment, yoga and dance studios, and DIY construction projects to examine the tropes of self-help, wellness, the white cube and boutique fitness trends.  These specific, aestheticized spaces imply the patronage of an elite clientele, projecting health, fitness and art as an often cost-prohibitive commodity.  Ebstein uses lighthearted motifs as a counterbalance to the critical questions at the core of her work.  

Fad Bodies is a body of work that reimagines gyms, spas and their elitist marketing campaigns as a series of abstract, mixed media works and installation.