The Week in Arts

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Art in Unexpected Places
by Amanda Manitach

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ENNUI AT THE LAUNDROMAT
Seattle has its fair share of unconventional art spaces (see above), but even these pale in comparison to the surreality of an exhibit at the laundromat. Especially when that laundromat is Lather Daddy on 12th Ave.

There, nested among a small forest of double decker washers and dryers are six untitled oil paintings on linen. It’s one of Matthew Offenbacher’s weird and charming strokes of genius. Offenbacher recently relocated to Lather Daddy’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and immediately felt the need to mount a show in the establishment.

As anyone knows who’s been paying attention, Offenbacher has had a busy year. He won the Neddy (check out my recent interview with him here). He was nominated for a Stranger Genius Award (which Rodrigo Valenzuela ended up taking home this past Saturday). In the midst of the flurry and hype, a counterpoint: a nameless show with nameless pieces, hung in the last place you’d look for the work of a celebrated artist.

Whatever it says about the man or his work, Offenbacher’s paintings look awesome here. They pop against Lather Daddy’s loud, cobalt blue walls. They're at home among the monotonous drone of churning fabric, the half-full candy dispensers and wearily blinking arcade lights.

According to a sheet of paper sheethed in a plastic sleave, the paintings are “proudly transitional and regressive.” At Lather Daddy, they’re intended as a “palliative for waiting, boredom and everyday work.”

One of said palliatives is a painting of an empty food processor at rest against an enervating, taupe background. Another: a loose bundle of peach and vermillion tulips drooping listlessly over a flute. Sandwiched between two washers, a black cat framed by muddy, mauve wallpaper peers menacingly across at the neighboring painting of a bouquet on an ochre tabletop.

Everything is laughably dull, decorative and pretty. The paintings defy you to like them. There’s one that simply glows, however. It’s a bundle of bluebells stuck in a vase with a bunch of drooping, white bellflowers. Everything is an ecstatic storm of brushstrokes. The palette is as color-promiscuous as a box of smashed Fruit Loops. It hangs just above an ATM and to the left of a Terminator 3 pinball machine.

Instead of placards with titles, notes are taped beneath all the works: Come do laundry and meet the artist who made the flower paintings. Sunday, October 6 From 3-5pm.

If you have dirty laundry this weekend, this is where to bring it.