Laundry,BYD

The installation Laundry consists of abstracted car models composed of white primed canvases. The deconstructed design of the car silhouettes refers to the race between automobile manufacturers regarding aerodynamics, designs, and fuel consumption. As soon as the “car models” pass the portal of the glowing red car wash facility, colorful acrylic paints are sprayed onto rotating brushes from nozzles that are actually intended for cleaning cars, coloring the canvases. The performance, which was shown during the “Unlimited” exhibition at Art Basel, questions art production and the art business, revealing them to be precarious value transactions in the growing industrialization of culture.
The representation of the cars as assembled canvases and the painting of the vehicles as they move through the car wash translates the industrial fetishistic aspect of the car wash into the creative and sensual materialization of an artistic practice. Viewers become witnesses of a happening: The car wash paints the canvas cars, giving them a new identity. With the help of the washing program, paint is applied to the canvas mechanically—as a serial implementation of various modern or contemporary painting practices.