Curated by Fabrice Bousteau
Opening Thursday November 9, from 6 to 9 pm
On the occasion of the Nuit des Bains and Geneva Art Week
Xippas Gallery is pleased to present, for the first time in Geneva, an exhibition by the Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich. For this exhibition, which will be presented in our two spaces at Rue des Sablons 6 and Rue du Vieux-Billard 7, the artist and the gallery have invited the exhibition curator Fabrice Bousteau.
Entering the world of Leandro Erlich is entering a mirage, a world of optical illusions, mirrors, hidden depths, and deceits. As a conceptual artist, his work explores the perceptual foundations of reality and our ability to question these same foundations through a visual framework.
Clouds in cages, uprooted houses, melting houses in a cabbage, an elevator with no destination, stretched stairs, intertwined traffic lights, obstructed windows… the artist plays with our everyday life to divert it, distort it, and thus create a new world. The architecture of the everyday is a recurring theme in Erlich’s art. Master scenographer, he creates a dialogue between what we believe and what we see.
Leandro Erlich uses various mediums such as photography, video, and sculpture to construct imaginary and timeless situations that transport us to spaces with unstable boundaries.
On the occasion of his exhibition, the artist will present a range of works, from large installations such as ‘Lift’ or ‘VR Pool’ to more intimate pieces from the ‘Hybrid Nature’ series.
Leandro Erlich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1973. He lives and works between Paris, Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
He participated in the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and represented Argentina at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001) with his installation ‘Swimming Pool,’ which earned him international recognition. Today, this work is part of the permanent collection of the Kanazawa Museum in Japan (along with ‘Infinite Staircase’) and the Voorlinden Museum in the Netherlands.
His monumental piece ‘Building,’ created for Nuit Blanche (Paris) in 2004, toured the world, from France to Japan, Australia, Argentina, and Ukraine.
He has received numerous awards, including the UNESCO Prize (Istanbul, 2001), the Leonardo Prize (National Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, 2000), and the National Fund for the Arts Prize (Buenos Aires, 1992). In 2006, he was nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize and received the Roy Neuberger Prize in 2017.
He has recently exhibited at the Palazzo Reale in Milan (2023), the Pérez Art Museum in Miami (2023), and his exhibition ‘A Tensão’ was shown at the Centro Cultural Banco Do Brasil in Brasilia, after Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paolo, Brazil; the Museum of Fine Art in Houston (2022); and on Nodeul Island in Seoul, South Korea (2022).
His work is present in various public collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou (France), the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (USA), Tate Modern (London, UK), the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (Italy), and the Museum Voorliden in Wassenaar (Netherlands).
