The cover image for this issue of Artrkush is a photograph of Leandro Erlich's outdoor sculpture Window and Ladder — Too Late for Help. As part of Prospect.1 New Orleans, the surreal construction will be on view through January 18, 2009, in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward — which, three years later, still bears the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Erlich is also currently exhibiting at the Liverpool Biennale, Gallery Continua in Italy, the Chanel Mobile Art Center, and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.

Born in 1973 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Erlich now splits his time between his hometown and Paris. His induction into the art world was a swift one. At age 20, he received a grant from the Antorchas Foundation to study under Argentine sculptors Luis F. Benedit and Pablo Suárez. After his apprenticeship, he traveled to Houston, Texas, in 1998 to be an to be an artist-in-residence with the CORE Program, and within a year, he'd moved to New York and was exhibiting commercially. By 2001, he had participated in the previous year's Whitney Biennial and was representing his country at the 49th Venice Biennale. After this auspicious start, Erlich continued exhibiting at prestigious fairs in Asia, South America, and Europe — including the 3rd Shanghai Biennale, the 26th Biennial de São Paolo, la Nuit Blanche de Paris, and the 51st Venice Biennale. He also enjoyed solo exhibitions at Barcelona's Centre d'Art Santa Mónica, MACRO Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma, and Albion Gallery in London. He is represented by Ruth Benzacar Gallery in Buenos Aires and Sean Kelly Gallery in New York.

Erlich engages his viewers with funhouse installations that subvert the familiar scenarios of daily life. 2001's Swimming Pool, for example, leads museum goers into an aquatic environment, as other patrons watch from above. Now at the Liverpool Biennial, Carrousel addresses the repetitive routine of urban adulthood, transforming a sleek apartment — kitchen, living room, bedroom, bath, and all — into a slow revolving carnival ride. Like these two installations, Erlich's Prospect.1 contribution, Window and Ladder — Too Late for Help, is both pensive and playful, suggesting either flight or rescue. The artist has said that reality is a social construction that his art deconstructs; by transporting a house into the heavens, providing room to breath underwater, and taking an apartment to the fairgrounds, he provides a new context in which ordinary surroundings become adaptable and transitory. - Lauren McKee

Leandro Erlich
Window and Ladder — Too Late for Help, 2008
Metal ladder, underground hidden metal structure, aluminum frames, and fiberglass brick wall
14 3/4 x 5 1/4 ft./ 4.5 x 1.6 m
© Leandro Erlich
Courtesy the Artist, Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, and Ruth Benzacar Galeria de Arte, Buenos Aires
All Rights Reserved