Guided tour to the exhibition (Anna Rawlings)
God Out of a Washing Machine was Ilya Orlov's solo show at a Forum Box, Helsinki, in three parts: I. Squares and Freaks of Nature in Time of Evil; II. Stella Laura Andersson: The Missing Matriarch of Finnish Dada; III. Metaphysical Washing Machine; and an introductory work entitled Overthrone.
The exhibition press release stated:
"In Orlov’s new show, his trademark strategy of hacking traditional exhibition formats, toying with contemporary art clichés, and poeticising art administration jargon is pushed a little further. A solo exhibition looks like a group show of mutually incompatible artists; wall texts that normally explain the exhibits become exhibits themselves, to be explained by the works. Finally, the exhibition statement, instead of telling explicitly what it is all about, offers a piece of ‘international art English’ so convoluted that it makes one nostalgic about the clarity of e-flux announcements:
“Marrying Duchamp’s eroticist mechanics with forgotten baroque landscape painting; scrupulously recreating Malevich’s craquelures (only for the sake of switching on gravity in his weightless utopia); putting the artist’s own witticisms into the mouths of contemporary philosophers like Timothy Morton and Donna Haraway; planting inverted perspective of Byzantine icons into constructivist axonometry; and finally, turning Sol Lewitt’s cube into a ‘metaphysical washing machine’, the exhibition invites the viewer to look at culture and art itself through a psychedelic conceptualist kaleidoscope of sorts.”
Overthrone
Fake antique chair, mannequin hand. Detail.
Part I. Squares and Freaks of Nature in Time of Evil
Exhibition view
Part II. Stella Laura Andersson: The Missing Matriarch of Finnish Dada
Stormface. 2023. Oil on canvas, plastic frame, suit jacket, shirt
Part III. Metaphysical Washing Machine
Acrylic and calcium silicate on chipboard and wood. Hight: 270 cm
God Out of a Washing Machine exhibition was made with the participation of Eero Karjalainen, Mark Maher, and Anna Rawlings.
Consultants: Juha-Heikki Tihinen, Leonor Ruiz Dubrovin, Matthew Cowan, Andrey Ustinov, Semyon Motolyanets, Sezgin Boynik, and Jyrki Siukonen.
Acknowledgements: Irina Ptakhova, Jan Kaila, Mika Elo, Kaisu Koivisto, Pasha and Sasha Rotts, Frank Brümmel, Elisa Vuori, Lars Federley, Seppo Sinkkonen, Anna Akins, Kamilla Billiers, Avreno Heikka, Jana Siren, Katharina (Ina) George, Martin Ormin.
Special thanks: Riikka Anttonen.
Photographs: Anna Autio, Mark Maher, Anna Rawlings.
The exhibition was supported by Taike, The Alfred Kordelin Foundation, and The Finnish Cultural Foundation.