Leandro Erlich’s (Buenos Aires, 1973) installations question the vision of reality through simulations and optical effects. Erlich manipulates everyday spaces and situations to establish a parallel reality that connects with unique and objective truth.
Despite being built like clockwork, the works of this artist require an initial sensory, immersive approach which only after admits conceptual reflection or an analysis of the mechanisms that produce the strangeness. Erlich created for the 'Nuit Blanche' in Paris in 2004 Bâtiment (Building) where the public is invited to climb and move around on facade of a building, which is actually reflected in a giant mirror, thereby creating spectacular alteration effects on the laws of gravity. Conversely, one of his most amazing works of art from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa (Japan) is a "pool" by Erlich who manages to disconcert the spectator, upon seeing from the surface that the public can walk around underwater.
In his first solo exhibition in Spain, Erlich presents La Torre (The Tower), 2008 one of his most ambitious projects, produced specifically for the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. La Torre is a tall building decorated like an apartment block with windows and corridors, in which a mirrored device invites the spectators, located on the ground floor, to see what is happening on the floor above, and vice versa, creating a perspective game where the spectator sees and is seen depending on their location. A complex set of perspectives that dismantles any sense of direction and questions the obvious and ordinary. In parallel, the people inside the installation look like they are floating to those looking from outside through the windows. Public participation in this facility is essential to complete the allegorical sense posed by the artist.
La Torre is a project from the exhibition programme "Producciones", under which specific projects are developed and produced by the museum and created by artists, both Spanish and foreign, whose career is beginning to consolidate. The purpose is to foster an alternative to traditional exhibitions, and aims to stimulate and enhance current creative activity.
