Laundry Baskets. No Retention, 2020

The 3 sculptures that make up this show reproduce 3 broken fragments of a giant laundry basket. The largest work, “Room”, suggests a homemade animal trap ready to catch its victim, while its white interior presents a cozy nook complete with children’s doodles scrawled on its walls – drawings made by the artist’s 5-year-old daughter – suggesting an intimate place for freedom and play. “Handle”, a gaping mouth displaying its teeth, consists of the half-broken handle of the basket, precariously balanced atop a column of sponges reminiscent of the repetitive and tedious labor implied in daily life. “Corner” is a corner section of the basket that in order to remain upright has to tenaciously wrap around a heavy piece of lumber by a rope made out of t-shirts’ collars. Flaunting what’s normally hidden, the care instruction and brand labels take the spotlight in an effort to bring together privacy and care with politics and consumerism, a prevailing issue underlaying most of Partegàs’s works. Turning the anonymity and powerlessness of ordinary objects on their heads, these works combine aggressiveness and destruction with a sense of sensuality and care, inviting us to interrogate our established convictions of safety and progress.