Leandro Erlich – Jardín perdido / Lost Garden
February 14 - June 6, 2010
Lost Garden by Leandro Erlich (Argentina, b. 1973) inaugurates the new MOLAA Project Room, which is devoted to exhibiting some of the most cutting edge and experimental contemporary artists of Latin America.
Leandro Erlich is one of today’s most innovative artists on the international art scene. Erlich conceives unique installations which recreate familiar spaces and structures, mostly architectonic, that transform our perception of the real world. With the combination of structures that range from rooms, buildings, windows or doors and the use of mirrors, the artist constructs multiple and impossible perspectives which result in disconcerting, unexpected and playful games of visual illusions.
Erlich suggests other ways of “seeing” and experiencing the known beyond the limitations of the banality of the repetition of daily existence, where things are given as known entities and no mystery exists. We could say that Erlich’s installations function as a theatre for the spectator’s participation and the encounter with a transformative experience. Two important aspects in Erlich’s work are his development of playfulness and the singular creation of artifacts. The playfulness lies in the contradiction of common utilitarian structures in urban environments in order to convert them into useless suggestive artifacts/buildings/structures. This playfulness is extended to the spectator who is invited to participate and interact with the piece. This interaction is needed to activate works such as Swimming Pool, 2008 or The Neighbor, 2009.
The work proposed for Leandro Erlich’s exhibition at MOLAA is Lost Garden. It is a triangular, enclosed construction which contains a garden. Even though we are aware of the limited dimensions of the architectural structure, when we look inside, the garden is infinite in size. The artist has written about the piece: “My work, Lost Garden, aspires to create depth within the banal experience of everyday spaces. With the help of mirrors, the work creates the illusion of an interior garden. Outside the truth is revealed and the triangular prism assures us that the garden is impossible. The plastic artificial plants are visually multiplied in the reflections, and through the windows one can peek through to find a garden that doesn't actually exist.” Conceptually Lost Garden is, according to the artist, “a poetic image of life, of time and of nature ... an idyllic place like paradise ... it represents a permanent state of longing and irreparable nostalgia.”
Erlich’s Lost Garden can be seen as drawing on the tradition of the diorama—a three-dimensional exhibit, usually housed in a niche or space viewed through an opening—which originated before the 19th century for peep shows. It became widely employed after the mid-19th century, particularly in natural history museums, to attempt to illustrate the natural environment of displayed specimens. Usually it consists of a flat or curved backing to which a scenic painting or photograph is mounted. Objects are placed in front and perspective and lighting effects heighten the illusion of dimensionality. Erlich’s Lost Garden functions as a diorama, but its multi-dimensionality, which results from the artist’s use of mirrors, defies any laws of perspective by suggesting much more depth and expansiveness than in reality. Lost Garden is closely associated but simultaneously contrary to the Terrarium, also called the “Glass Garden” or “Vivarium.” This denotes a glass container and often a glass top. Terrariums house plants or animals for the purpose of indoor decoration, scientific observation, or plant or animal propagation. Lost Garden has no purpose beyond its impossible and fantastic existence. The plants displayed inside are generic and artificial, giving the general impression of a tropical, lush garden, often associated with the idea of paradise or idyllic nature. Lost Garden is closer in nature to Étant donnés, 1946-66, by Marcel Duchamp, central to all of his work, subverts any assumption about what reality is. Étant donnés plays with our voyeuristic tendencies by inviting the public to look through a peephole to discover a subversive and enigmatic image that is unexpected and open to multiple interpretations. Erlich’s installation also invites the participation of the spectators to ultimately contradict and surprise their expectations by providing an alternative view of reality.
Lost Garden is a confined space which, opposite to being restrictive and limited, proposes infinite space for a concrete but impossible idea. It is a fantasy of a fantasy that proposes the marriage between the impossible and its materialization into existence. It is impossible yet nevertheless it exists.
Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Chief Curator
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Since 2000, Erlich has participated in many important international biennials such as the Whitney Biennial (2001), the Venice Biennale (2001 and 2005) and the Bienal de Sao Paulo (2004). He has exhibited extensively worldwide in institutions such as El Museo del Barrio, New York, (2001); Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona (2003) and Museo d arte Contemporanea Roma (2006). His work is represented in important private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires; Tate Modern, London; MACRO, Rome and the Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris.
LEANDRO ERLICH ACTIVITY GUIDE - ENGLISH
LEANDRO ERLICH ACTIVITY GUIDE - SPANISH
Back