Artists: Leandro Erlich
Leandro Erlich produces phenomenological installations that play with our perception and sense of reality by means of trickery and the manipulation of physical space through simulation effects. His works appeal to all our senses by challenging the basic rules of perception. This is where the recent widespread acclaim of his art originates: he touches the playful nature of his audiences worldwide by immersing the viewers in a world of illusion.
French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) stated that one's own body is not only a thing, an object of study, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world and to its investment. His phenomenological philosophy placed perception at the centre of human experience, by according perception an active and constitutive dimension in the acquisition of knowledge. In the light of this line of thinking, contemporary artists have resorted to ways if stimulating extraordinary experiences of diverse nature.
Erlich presents us with an array of puzzling spaces where closed doors let through the promise of another side that does not exist, peepholes show the impossible and mirrors do not reflect because rooms are inverted to produce the illusion of reflection. Leandro's techniques are closer to theatre, as they borrow more elements from set design than from the visual arts. It is perhaps because of this that they make us active participants of the drama of our own disconcert where he acts as director.
One of these devises is optical illusion, which has been a devise used by artists for centuries. Holbein gave us a gift of distorted perception with the inclusion of an anamorphosis in his magnificent painting The Ambassadors.
In another ambassador's house, in 2006, Erlich displays Toilette, a self standing toilet cabin that invites us in, only to make us aware that what we see is not really there. Upon realising that our senses have been tricked, wonder and excitement invade us. Experience has been manipulated, and our idea of what we are seeing is thrown in the air with laughter.
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Toilette
2005
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