Fundación PROA, Argentina
Debbie Grimberg, curator
El consultorio del Psicoanalista, 2005
2’20”
DVD
The action takes place in two spaces separated by a glass: a psychoanalyst’s room—complete with furniture and objects that identify it as such—and an empty space with a few scattered cubes throughout where the spectator is expected to enter. The moment the spectator sits on the cubes, his or her image is reflected, through the glass, onto some real object in the other room (the psychoanalyst’s or the patient’s chair). In this work the public assumes the role of performer and the video makes it possible to experience how the work is articulated by means of the interaction of the public.
Leandro Erlich was born in Buenos Aires in 1973. He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
The recurrent themes throughout his oeuvre are reality and appearance, illusion and defamiliarization, His works alter the perceptual field, demand concentration and shake the spectator. His work has been exhibited internationally for over ten years. Currently, he is presenting an installation at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, in Madrid.
Installation
Mixed media, simetric spaces, glass, furniture
4,50 x 2,60 x 9,00 mts
Fundación PROA presents Leandro Erlich’ El consultorio del Psicoanalista, (2005). The installation was first exhibited at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Le Grand Café (Saint Nazaire, Francia), in April, 2005. As a complement and support of the video exhibited in Art in the Auditorium, the installation proposes to reflect and question about Concepts such as scenery, performance, document and backstage.
El consultorio del Psicoanalista is presented for the first time in Buenos Aires, a city hving a pscichoanalitic tradition. In a brief conversation with the Foundation, Erlich comments:
“The work was developed in Paris where I lived until 2006. It is peculiar, because I have been born in Buenos Aires and as much in Paris as in our City the psychoanalysis, has made school (…). In the installation, the spectator interacts and generates a fiction that a metaphorical image constructs as well. Our “fantasmagoric reflect” moves within a space related to the reflection. El consultorio del Psicoanalista is a place where to go and treat subjects related to our existence, and our reflect is a state of conscious about it. (…). The participation of the public is essential and the reactions are multiple. Most of the times, a playful experience is produced by the surprise which generates upon the recognition of the scene. Perhaps the most surprising -because not wise it at first- is the proximity that the work has with some optical experiences that Lacan has used to represent and to explain certain subjects of the psychoanalysis”.
The installation has been exhibited at Galería Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona (2005); Galería Brito Cimino, São Paulo (2006); Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, (2006).