Leandro Erlich's exhibition where nothing is as it seems at Milan Design Week 2023

Starting on April 22, 2023, Palazzo Reale in Milan will host for the first time in Europe a large-scale solo exhibition of one of the most prominent figures on the international art scene—Leandro Erlich. Promoted by the Municipality of Milan-Culture, the exhibition is produced and organised by Palazzo Reale and Arthemisia in collaboration with Studio Erlich and is curated by Francesco Stocchi.

An Argentine artist born in Buenos Aires in 1973, Erlich creates large-scale installations with which the public relates and interacts, becoming the artwork itself. His unique works represent something absolutely new in the art world, bringing together creativity, vision, emotion, and fun. Buildings on which one appears to climb, houses uprooted and suspended in mid-air, lifts going nowhere, escalators tangled like threads in a ball of yarn, disorienting and surreal sculptures, and videos that subvert normality. These are all elements recounting something ordinary in an extraordinary context, in which everything is different from what it seems, and where we lose our sense of reality and perception of space.

Erlich’s works are the result of a profound and conceptual artistic exploration that flows into paradox, winning over millions of visitors worldwide: 600,000 in Tokyo and 300,000 in Buenos Aires. Everywhere, the public has thronged to his exhibitions which are characterised by site-specific installations that are highly complex to make, and therefore quite rare. Starting April 22, 2023, at Palazzo Reale, visitors will be given the opportunity to become better acquainted with Erlich’s art through his best-known and most iconic works, brought together for the first time in a single venue with the aim of systematising the artist’s output.

Erlich takes us to a magical elsewhere, where the possible becomes impossible, but that astonishes and excites owing to a great aesthetic sense and highly intrinsic poetry. The result is explosive, fun, exciting, and unforgettable. His work explores the perceptual bases of reality and our ability to question these same bases through a visual framework. The architecture of the everyday is a recurring theme in Erlich’s art, which aims to create a dialogue between what we believe and what we see, just as it seeks to bridge the gap between museum space and everyday experience.

Describing himself, the artist says, "I like to present myself as a conceptual artist working in the realm of reality and perception. My subject is reality, symbols and the potential for meaning. I strive to create a body of work—especially in the public sphere—that is open to the imagination, subverts normality, rethinks representation, and proposes actions that construct and deconstruct situations to disrupt reality. Speaking generally."

Each of Leandro Erlich’s works is to be read as a window into a world that is sensitive to the gaze, that instead of misleading reveals the landscape that every person holds within his or herself. On the first reaction, an Erlich work elicits a sense of familiarity with respect to the everyday, before raising a certain, insinuating doubt. By carefully gazing at the work, viewers begin to doubt what they perceive, as they are confronted with an inexplicable phenomenon. Stirring up questions, doubts, and emotions in the public interacting with his works is Erlich’s primary thought, and it is the viewer’s participation that makes the work complete. It is difficult to explain Erlich with words. He has to be experienced to be understood.

STIR’s coverage of Milan Design Week 2023 showcases the best exhibitions, studios, designers, installations, brands, and special projects to look out for. Explore Euroluce 2023 and all the design districts—5vie, Brera, Fuorisalone, Isola, Tortona Design Week, and Durini—with us.