Leandro Erlich, Puerto de Memorias (Port of Memories), 2016. Mixed media installation. Dimensions variable. MUNTREF Museum de la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febraro, Buenos Aires © MUNTREF. Photo: Alvaro Figueroa
Leandro Erlich, a noted Argentine conceptual artist, is well known for turning the ordinary — an elevator, a swimming pool, a harbor — into a nonfunctional work that brings the viewer into a world of illusion. Recipient of the 2017 Roy R. Neuberger Exhibition Prize, Erlich’s monumental “Port of Reflections,” with its boardwalk, rails, and colorful rowboats that appear to float and gently rock as their reflections “shimmer” in the waters beneath, will be on view for the first time in the United States at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, February 5–July 30, 2017. This is the artist’s most ambitious museum installation to date.
But there is no water beneath the rowboats and there are no reflections. The boats are suspended in midair, and motors create the rocking motion. “Revealing the trick is crucial,” said the artist. “It transforms the deception into something positive [and] allows the spectator to think and discover.”
According to Patrice Giasson, co-curator, with Helaine Posner, “He asks us to consider the everyday and to question it.” “Port of Reflections” crystalizes most of the elements that define the artist’s works: displacement and challenging perceptions about how and where things are supposed to be.
“Port of Reflections” was modified from an earlier version created for the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea in 2014 and later presented as “Puerto de Memorias (Port of Memories)” at MUNTREF, Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Tres Febrero in Buenos Aires.
Opening reception: Saturday evening, February 4, 6:30–8 pm. nma.rsvp@purchase.edu
Port of Reflections is on view at Neuberger Museum of Art (735 Anderson Hill Road Purchase, NY 10577) from February 5 through July 30, 2017.
neuberger.org / 914-251-6100
