Leandro Erlich

Nogueras Blanchard presents the latest work of Leandro Erlich (Buenos Aires, 1973). His new installation Psychoanalyst’s office (2005) breaks into the architecture of the gallery transforming radically your perception of reality.

Erlich divides the installation space into two halves of identical size, separated by a large glass sheet. In one of the spaces, which do not have access to the visitor, rebuilt with all its formal features an office of psychoanalyst. Plays with attention to detail, from the psychoanalyst’s couch to a framed photograph of Freud and a used ashtray on the table. The second area, which gives access to the facility, is a black cube with saturated neon ceiling. As the viewer enters the black room, its mirror image is replicated within the office thus creating an illusory scene, a virtual puzzle. The office operates as a theatrical set with the active participation of the viewer in the narrative of the work.

Leandro Erlich facilities arise from the everyday world and create atmospheres where, through an artifice, disturb our perception of things as they are and how they work in time and space. In his use of reflective material, a reference to the practice of conceptual Dan Graham and his exploration of perception is detected by spaces games, reflections of mirrors and transparent glass, creating a dialogue between the viewer and the work space.

Erlich also evident in the office an interest in psychoanalytic theory. This reading of the psychoanalytic methodology Jacques Lacan about narcissism and primary identification, which shows the constitution of the “I” through the image themselves and others in a mirror relationship: “The subject identifies with something that not with ghostly mirror with an imaginary image.”