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There’s fresh laundry and then there’s fresh art. The latest exhibition from Desnivel Gallery is spinning both ideas together—literally—inside JJ Cleaners & Laundromat on East 5th Street, where artist Gloria Maximo’s new show SERVICE unfolds among the washers and dryers.
Now open through November 15, the exhibition transforms the East Village laundromat into an unlikely gallery, reimagining a space of everyday labor as a site for reflection on work, care and the invisible economies that keep life running. “Gloria Maximo’s paintings depict an economy of care,” reads the exhibition text. “They adjust our perception to the reality of need—the need for services, the need for employment, even the need for a place to be.”
The show, organized by Desnivel founder Maria De Victoria, is part of the gallery’s ongoing experiment in expanding the idea of where art belongs. Previous Desnivel shows have appeared in hardware stores and corner markets, each chosen to blur the lines between creative practice and the city’s daily rhythms. De Victoria founded the gallery to highlight the financial challenges of running an art space while making art more accessible to the public.
Inside JJ Cleaners, Maximo’s grid paintings hang amid a collage of utilitarian signage—OUT OF ORDER, NO SMOKING, HOURS OF OPERATION. Her works echo and interrupt that visual noise, slowing down what we normally skim past. Some passersby may mistake the pieces for new signs, only to realize they’re something else entirely: meditations on maintenance, labor and the unseen systems that sustain us.
A recipient of the A.I.R. Commissioning Program for Mid-Career Women and Non-Binary Artists, Maximo often draws from her own experiences in the service industry and caregiving work. Her concurrent show, MESO LEVEL, just opened at A.I.R. Gallery in Dumbo, but SERVICE feels uniquely rooted in the fabric of the East Village—a neighborhood where art and everyday life have long shared the same load.
If you go, you’ll find the paintings among the hum of dryers, the smell of detergent and the faint chatter of regulars waiting out the spin cycle. It’s art that asks for patience, quiet attention and maybe a few quarters.