Defying gravity, defying habits and defying common beliefs, Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich is best known for his immersive art installation that takes his audience into experience a new kind of reality.
Defying gravity, defying habits and defying common beliefs, Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich is best known for his immersive art installation that takes his audience into experience a new kind of reality.
From massive installations to videos, Erlich’s works employ optical illusions and sound effects to shake up our notions of common sense. Though what the audience sees may at first glance seem familiar, on closer inspection it proves to be a surprising, unsettling deviation from the usual, in the form of, for example, a boat floating in the absence of water, or people sticking to the wall in various poses. Viewers begin to doubt whether what they see is actually reality, and notice just how much unconscious habit influences the way they look at things.
The artist is most popularly known for his Swimming Pool installation, first debut in MoMA PS1 in New York autumn of 2008. Erlich has constructed a full-size pool, complete with all its trappings, including a deck and a ladder. Visitors found themselves presented with a surreal scene: people, fully clothed, can be seen standing, walking, and breathing beneath the surface of the water. It is only when visitors enter the Duplex gallery from the basement that they recognize that the pool is empty, its construction a visual trick fashioned by the artist. A large, continuous piece of acrylic spans the pool and suspends water above it, creating the illusion of a standard swimming pool that is both disorienting and humorous.
Covering the entire 25 years of Erlich’s career to date, 44 works are currently on display at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan. “Leandro Erlich: Seeing and Believing” is is the largest-ever exhibition devoted to the work of this fascinating artist. Most of the works are seen in Japan for the first time.
Leandro Erlich from OTDM on Vimeo.
Erlich engages the audience to in immersive environment of his art; to experience the ridding of inertia, habit, preconceived notions of reality; and to consider the notion of an alternative reality beyond what we are so accustomed to seeing; so that with a new, unclouded vision will take them into a new kind of world.
The current exhibition Leandro Erlich: Seeing is Believing is currently on view at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, until Apr 1, 2018
Title Image: from Mori Art Museum
