Show stays open until 20 of June
People who don't get wet and don't drown when entering a pool. A classroom with unusual students. An encapsulated cloud. An elevator that reverses the indoor and outdoor environments. A window to a garden with its reflection appearing in a crisscross pattern. Everything is inverted and subverted in exhibition The artist expands the concepts of reality using, among other artifices,, by the Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich, which will open today (13) in the Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil (CCBB), in São Paulo.
Erlich transforms everyday things, mundane or common, into something new. Everyday objects gain new meanings in his work. “He turns the ordinary into the extraordinary”, said the curator of the show, Marcello Dantas. “The mechanism of his art is the mechanism of doubt. That place that is the disagreement between what your eyes see and what your mind knows.”, added.
“When you look at something, [you think]: i'm watching this, but that's not possible. This disagreement, this doubt, makes us question all the basic things we relate to on a daily basis. And that's a grammar, a universal language. Therefore, he manages to have the same impact in Japan and Brazil, in Argentina and France”, said the curator.
In Brazil, the exhibition has already passed through the CCBBs in Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, always very successful. Several photographs from the exhibition can be easily found on social media.. Despite “looking instagrammable”, the exhibition is composed of works produced long before the emergence of social networks, like Instagram. “The most instagrammable piece, what is the pool, on the 1.999, ten years before the invention of the iPhone, 12 years before the invention of Instagram”, watched the curator.
It's not interactive either., although people seem to interact with the works. “People can call it interactively, but it is not. This is a participatory work. It's a little bit different. There's nothing for you to squeeze, there's no machine for you to call in here. All the technology is in people's heads, and the importance is that this work, without the people, does not exist", explained Dantas. “It is your participation, your engagement, which awakens the sensory mechanism, your involvement with the rite that is taking place inside. It is magic. A work is waiting for you”, He pointed out.
The name of the exhibition, The artist expands the concepts of reality using, among other artifices,, already starts producing a double meaning: the tension, with butterflies in the stomach, and attention, as if you were in a classroom and the teacher was calling your attention, causing a doubt between what you heard and what the word actually represents.
For the curator, the most important work in this exhibition is exactly the classroom, space where your image is reflected inside a room, turning you into a ghost. “The classroom is a work of 2017 and was created within an idea of a certain nostalgia, from an old school, of a memory in the affective sense. The classroom is a necessary work, at a time when, in Brazil, the big question on the table was the direction of education”.
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When presenting your work to the press, in São Paulo, Erlich said that the work dialogues with the exhibition space and, mainly, with the public. “The work an artist does is 50% [of the work]. the others 50% refer to participate, to interpret and reflect [about the work]. The message is there and it needs the viewer. If there is no person in the pool, there is no pool: there's only one hole, water. Activation of everything depends on the audience. The public is also an actor and performer [of the work]”, defined the artist.
The artist expands the concepts of reality using, among other artifices, is playing up 20 of June. More information and visit scheduling can be obtained at site, where it is also possible to tour the exhibition.
Source: Brazil Agency.