Everyday Tasks – Sphere of the Gods

As part of the installation Everyday Tasks – Sphere of the Gods, a free-standing washing machine is enthroned in the black marbled main room, where visitors are invited to clean their job-specific clothes and thus combine their visit to the exhibition with their routine laundry chores. The machine is in dialogue with a sculpture set up in the immediate vicinity, which, in the shape of the straining artist himself, is ready to be used to hang up the laundry and which will change its shape again and again during the course of the exhibition.

Usually known as a solitary entity unimpressed by its environment, the sculpture thus joins the sphere of everyday tasks in this context and completes the pragmatism of the scenery. Although its pose makes considerable effort to provide as much hanging space as possible, the matter quickly becomes an awkward balancing act. And while the art performs practical work throughout, the visitors have the opportunity to linger in Dahlem for several hours and experience first-hand the liminal state created by the washing as well as the waiting associated with drying laundry.