Leandro_Erlich__Liminal

Event Details

This event finished on 26 October 2019

Categories: Exhibitions, Exhibitions
Tags: Plantilla histórica

07.05 — 10.26.19
Opening: Thursday, July 4m 7:00 p.m.
Facade and Levels 2 and -1

More than any artist working today, Leandro Erlich (1973, Buenos Aires) has created a body of sculpture and large installations over the past two decades in which the architectural appearance of the everyday functions as a type of perceptual trap, leading he unsuspecting viewer into a visual paradox that systematically defies what should be the rules and order of the material world. In Erlich’s parallel universe, stairs lead nowhere, elevators don’t stop at a destination, passive spectators become active participants, clouds take on physical characteristics, and the solidity of built space turns out to be a fleeting optical illusion.

Liminal is the first monographic survey exhibition of Erlich’s work throughout the American continent and brings together a selection of twenty-one installations, produced since 1996 to date. The title of the exhibition references a zone that exists at the threshold of another space, suggests a position of being on the verge of crossing over, or entering into, a specific destination or state of existence, but without ever fully getting there. To hover at the liminal edge of an experience suggests that one is perpetually caught between a prior reality that has been left behind, and a new reality beckoning at close range, but leaving us stranded if we were to linger.

The accumulated impact of experiencing multiple Erlich works within a single exhibition setting is that it leaves us with an intensified awareness of this inherent duality, wondering under what circumstances we can ever confidently assert that we are ever truly here or there.

This effect requires a believable simulation of everyday life, and to that end the sequence of works on view carries explicit connotations of quotidian existence: clouds, the subway, a classroom, the sidewalk, a pool, a beauty parlor, one’s neighbors, doors, a vase of flowers. Despite appearances, however, each work contains underpinnings of the uncanny, in which the viewer experiences a mild shock, because something that cannot possibly be real is nonetheless revealed as just as ordinary and matter-of-fact as the predictable phenomenon one was anticipating.

Curator: Dan Cameron, Curator in Chief, New Museum, New York (1995-2005).
Imágenes: [1] La vereda (2007). Gentileza Galería Ruth Benzacar). [2] Swimming Pool (2004). Gentileza 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Foto: Keizo Kioku.

Guided Tours

Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 5:00 p.m.

Catalogue

Alongside the exhibition, Malba is publishing a 200-page bilingual catalog in Spanish and English, which includes Dan Cameron's curatorial essay “Crossing the Threshold” and the texts “Arbitrary Orders” by artist and critic Luis Camnitzer and “Things as They Are, as They Are Not” by editor Julia Napier. The publication brings together all the works represented in this exhibition, as well as images from other projects carried out by Erlich over the last twenty years. The photographs illustrating Cameron's essay were selected from the hashtag #LeandroErlich on Instagram (which has more than 35,000 photos) and are images produced by hundreds of visitors who were part of the “Erlich experience” and activated his works in different institutions and public projects around the world.

Leandro Erlich

Argentina, 1973.
He lives and works in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

Over the past two decades, his work has been shown internationally and featured in the permanent collections of major museums and private collectors. He enjoys particular renown in Asia, and his most recent exhibitions at the MORI Art Museum (Tokyo, 2017) and the HOW Art Museum (Shanghai, 2018) have attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. On June his new show Próximamente opens at the Ruth Benzacar Gallery in Buenos Aires, followed by LIMINAL. On July, he will become the first non-Chinese artist to occupy the entire exhibition space at the CAFAM (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing), China’s premiere museum, with the show The Confines of The Great Void.

Inició su carrera con una muestra a los 18 años en el Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires) y al poco tiempo participó del Core Program, una residencia de artista en Houston, Texas, U.S (1998). En 2000, participó en la Bienal del Whitney Museum y representó a Argentina en la 49th Venice Biennial (2001) con Swimming Pool, una obra que hoy forma parte de las colecciones permanentes del 21st Century Museum of Art of Kanazawa (Japón) y del Voorlinden Museum (Países Bajos).

His public works include La Democracia del Símbolo, a joint intervention in the Obelisco monument and MALBA Museum that captivated the city of Buenos Aires in 2015; Maison Fond marked the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris and is on permanent display at the Gare du Nord (Nuit Blanche, 2015); the celebrated installation Bâtiment (Nuit Blanche, Paris, 2004) has been reproduced in countries across the globe (France, The UK, Australia, Japan, Argentina, Ukraine, Austria); in 2018, Ball Game was commissioned by the IOC to commemorate the Summer Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires. Port of Reflections has been exhibited at the MMCA (Seoul, Korea, 2014), at MUNTREF (Buenos Aires, 2016) and at the Neuberger Museum of Art (New York, 2017). Palimpsestis on permanent display at the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (Kinare, Japan, 2018).