De septiembre de 2015 a marzo de 2016
MALBA Fundación Costantini presenta La democracia del símbolo, primera obra site-specific de Leandro Erlich (Buenos Aires, 1973) en nuestro país, que toma al Obelisco porteño –ícono de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires- como eje central de un proyecto de arte público monumental.
Through his artistic intervention, Leandro Erlich—one of Argentina's most internationally renowned artists—offers visitors the chance to explore the interior and discover its aerial view for the first time since its founding in 1936.
“I am interested in creating projects in which art escapes the confines of conventional exhibition centers and becomes interwoven with everyday life,” explains Erlich. "I am interested in art as a tool for integration, action, and connection. The relationship between cities and monuments and what it means to visit them, because it's not just tourists who do so; it has to do with appropriation, pride, belonging. And the Obelisk in Argentina is a monument that was never intended to be visited," he adds.
La democracia del símbolo (The Democracy of the Symbol) is a unique artistic and social initiative, the result of collaboration between the artist and his studio, MALBA, the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, and Fate, the largest tire manufacturer in the country.
The work consists of two parts. On the one hand, at the Obelisk site, the artist directly intervenes on the monument, making its apex disappear, which reappears on the MALBA esplanade with a full-scale reproduction. In this way, the public will be able to enter the summit, with free admission, and enjoy the four aerial views of the central monument in the Argentine imagination.
The Obelisk was built in 1936 by modernist architect Alberto Prebisch. Since then, it has been a meeting place for celebrations and popular demonstrations. It has also inspired countless artistic projects by pioneering photographers such as Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola—who recorded its construction in a film—Marta Minujín, and Leandro Katz, among many others.
Its interior up there always aroused everyone's curiosity, and this project offers for the first time the possibility of democratizing access to it, transforming it into a public monument, open to all.
Leandro Erlich
Nació en Buenos Aires, Argentina, en 1973. Sus obras son arquitecturas de lo incierto, espacios de límites fluidos e inestables. La extrañeza que producen sus esculturas e instalaciones se percibe antes de que podamos precisar su sentido. Un solo cambio –arriba se convierte en abajo, adentro en afuera– puede bastar para alterar una situación aparentemente normal, y entonces la realidad estalla, queda expuesta como una falsificación.
Erlich ha vivido en EE.UU y en Francia. Actualmente trabaja entre Buenos Aires y Montevideo. Recibió becas del FNA (1992) y de Fundación Antorchas (1994-95). Participó en decenas de muestras individuales y colectivas en el país y el extranjero: Sean Kelly Gallery (EE.UU., 2011), Luciana Brito Galería (Brasil, 2009 y 2013), XXI Century Museum of Contemporary Art (Kanazawa, Japón, 2014), Museo Reina Sofía (España, 2008), PS1-MoMA (EE.UU.), 2008), Galería Ruth Benzacar (Argentina, 2000, 2007 y 2012), Fundación Proa (Argentina, 2009 y 2013), Centre Pompidou (Francia, 2011 y 2012), SongEun Art space (Corea, 2012), Izolyatsia (Ucrania, 2012) entre otras. Sus obras están en colecciones privadas y públicas como la Tate Modern (Londres), el Centre Pompidou, el Israel Museum (Jerusalem) y el XXI Century Museum of Contemporary Art (Kanazawa, Japón). Participó de las bienales de Montevideo (Uruguay), Saõ Paulo (Brasil), Shanghai (China), Echigo-Tsumari (Japón), La Habana (Cuba), Estambul (Turquia) y Whitney (EE.UU.), entre otras. Representó a la Argentina en la Bienal de Venecia (2001). Recibió los Premios Joan Mitchell Foundation (2001), UNESCO-Bienal de Estambul (2001) y Leonardo (MNBA, 2000) así como el Premio Konex (2002 y 2012). +info: http://leandroerlich.com.ar/
Erlich and the Obelisk
Leandro Erlich has been working with the Obelisk of Buenos Aires since the early years of his career. In 1994, he presented a project to install a metal obelisk in the La Boca neighborhood, which would be an exact replica of the original (it would retain the dimensions and height of 67.5 meters) but built on an iron structure and covered with steel sheets.
In Erlich's words: "The game was to imagine a city in which there was no monument with the iconic uniqueness of what the Obelisk represents for the City of Buenos Aires, but rather to create a double for it. I was interested in that duplicity—it was quite provocative because the Obelisk has always been a geographical reference point, a landmark—; imagining meeting someone at the Obelisk, for example, and then being asked, “Which one?” seemed interesting to me. It had to do with an idea linked to decentralization."
That project had the support of the Antorchas Foundation, the approval of local residents, and was accepted by municipal authorities, but in the end it never came to fruition. La democracia del símbolo brings the artist's 20-year obsession full circle.
"Obelisks and pyramids, among other formidable monuments, have been timeless, hypnotic, concentric emblems since ancient times. Colossal, hermetic, and indestructible. This is how they have been imagined, revered, and feared. (...) Our political imagination has tended to be, almost always, vertical, and will continue to be so, at least as long as it imagines, reveres, and fears with its gaze absorbed upward. And yet, these symbols remain firm and resounding as long as they are believed in. If we did not, their supremacy—that peculiar space stretched between the sacred, the fearsome, the erotic, and the inaccessible—would collapse in a matter of moments. It is a matter of finding out—through sacrilege—what is inside. Perhaps there is nothing, nothing more than what their idolaters place in them. And that is why they symbolize, at the same time, everything and nothing," writes Argentine sociologist Christian Ferrer in the book that accompanies the project.
Catalogue
Junto con el proyecto, MALBA editará una publicación que recoge ensayos del sociólogo argentino Christian Ferrer y del curador y crítico estadounidense Dan Cameron, especialmente escritos para la ocasión e ilustrados con fotografías históricas.
También se incluye una entrevista al artista por Agustín Pérez Rubio, Director Artístico de MALBA, que contextualiza este proyecto en relación con la trayectoria de Erlich y la tradición de otras obras monumentales de arte público. Se reproducen además fotografías del proyecto en todas sus fases de producción.
Programa Explanada
Con esta pieza, se reactiva la explanada del museo como un espacio de exhibición central para la realización de obras de gran formato especialmente pensadas y producidas para este lugar o para la exhibición de importantes proyectos de grandes artistas contemporáneos. Desde su fundación, en septiembre de 2001, MALBA realizó cuatro proyectos, de perfiles muy diversos, que tuvieron un alto impacto en la comunicación del museo y su comunidad:
2003 – Penetrable, de Jesús Soto (Ciudad Bolívar, 1923 – París, 2005)
2004 – Serie Elípticas, de Artur Lescher (San Pablo, 1962)
2005 – Tiempo como actividad, de David Lamelas (Bs As, 1946)
2006 – Volumen, de Sergio Avello (Mar del Plata 1964 – Bs As, 2010) –Pieza adquirida por la Fundación Eduardo F. Costantini en 2010. Actualmente en exhibición en el museo MAR de Mar del Plata.
La obra Ballerina de Jeff Koons (York, Pensilvania, 1955) se exhibirá finalmente en abril de 2016, dando continuidad al programa Explanada.
