Pentti Monkkonen

Pentti Monkkonen has reimagined the gallery as a laundromat with an edition of miniature models of front-loading, coin-operated, washing machines. Windows into the machines reveal handmade pasta shaped into the symbols assigned to major currencies: dollar, euro, pound and yen.

The apertures in pasta boxes are conflated with those found in washing machines to offer a perspective on the hidden machinations of global economics and on the art market (described recently in a U.S. Senate’s report as an industry where “secrecy, anonymity and a lack of regulation create an environment ripe for laundering money.”) Monkkonen also connects the shared, spinning mechanics of the modern laundromat with those of the historic mill.

These works continue Monkkonen’s interest in packaging and vessels. He has, for example, previously painted bottles of exotic liquors and packets of cigarettes but unlike the Pop Artists of the 1960s he celebrates obscurity and eccentricity rather than ubiquity. Often they also offer some critique, whether to expose the historic green-washing of petrochemical companies or to highlight the health warnings on cigarette packaging that somehow hide in plain sight.

Pentti Monkkonen (b. Minneapolis 1975) lives and works in Berlin. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. He has exhibited extensively across Europe and the United States with solo institutional exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in 2014 and 2000 and group exhibitions at Centre d’art Contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec, 2022; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2019; the Yuz Museum, Shanghai and Villa du Parc, Centre d’art Contemporain, Annemasse, 2018; Bergen Kunsthall, 2014; Parc Saint Léger, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Pougues-les-Eaux, 2008; East and Peggy Phelps Galleries, Los Angeles, 2008; Prague Biennale, 2007; JCC Gallery of Art, Kansas City and Centrum für Gegenwartskunst, Linz, 2000 and Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, 1998.