Leandro Erlich

Can you climb the facade of a Parisian building laid flat on the ground or lean over boats that seem to float without a drop of water?

'Leandro Erlich' is the exhibition the Grand Palais dedicates to the Argentinian artist from June 2 to September 6, 2026: his first major solo exhibition in France, bringing together fourteen monumental installations where appearances slip away as you approach.

The exhibition's curator, who chose the works, Fabrice Bousteau, director of Beaux Arts Magazine, has assembled them in the Grand Palais galleries.

Port of Reflections (2014) welcomes visitors with a dock: small fiberglass boats seem to float on a black, still surface.

The effect relies first on the staging: silence, semi-darkness, reflected hulls.

Up close, the illusion unravels: there is no water, a hidden mechanism makes the hulls sway, and what looks like a reflection belongs to the sculpture itself.

The Cloud and The View, present throughout the journey, play with setup and voyeuristic gaze, offering situations where what seems perceived turns out to be a construction.

Shattering Door and the Documentation Room Unlike a magician, Leandro Erlich does not hide his 'tricks': everything is deliberately shown, and we engage knowingly with how the effect is achieved. Shattering Door (2009) reveals the key.

This door appears cracked all over, about to burst, but it is just a painted laminate panel airbrushed expertly. To depict the cracks, the artist says he broke fifteen glass panes with stones, filmed in slow motion; lacking a break pattern that convinced him, he ended up drawing them by hand.

Born in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the work also evokes certainties breaking apart.

Changing Rooms and Building The last Grand Palais gallery gathers the most immersive pieces, those you actually enter. Changing Rooms (2008) lines up elegant fitting rooms whose mirrors, instead of reflecting your image, open the space and connect one room to the next; you can see a stranger appear from the neighboring cabin.

Thirty cabins fit together into a labyrinth with undefined contours, where the mirror, a recurring tool for the artist, stops reflecting and becomes a door. Leandro Erlich, Changing Rooms, 2008, woodwork, stools, gilded frames, mirrors, curtains, carpets, and lighting. Fitting rooms interlinked in a mirror labyrinth with blurry boundaries.

The journey ends with Building (2004), born in Paris for Nuit Blanche and since shown in more than fifteen countries. The work adapts each time to local architecture: in Paris, a Haussmannian building in pale stone typical of the grand boulevards; elsewhere, a brick facade.

The facade lies flat on the ground, with a huge mirror tilted at 45 degrees restoring it upright. Lying across the windows and balconies, visitors appear in the mirror suspended on the building, acrobats defying gravity.