During Miami Art Week 2019, the City of Miami Beach will unveil ‘Order of Importance’, a monumental site-specific installation by the Argentinian Leandro Erlich.
The artist will unveil a surreal site-specific installation on the beachfront at Lincoln Road during Miami Art Wee. The installation will be on display to the public from December 1–15, 2019.The installation “Order of Importance” will include 66 replicas of cars, trucks and full size. Remaking sand in the traffic jams of the 21st century.
With this ephemeral work, Erlich refers to time, figuratively and materially.
Throughout his career, Erlich has combined elements of sculpture, architecture, and theater to create surreal environments that disrupt the audience’s natural view of the world. The arist explain, “As an artist, I am in a constant struggle to make people aware of this reality, in particular, the idea that we cannot shrink away from our responsibilities to protect the planet.”
The largest work produced by Erlich to date is a timely and poignant reflection on the current climate crisis. Climate change is first addressed where it’s most easily perceived. Miami is a front-row witness to climate change,’ says the artist. ‘The environment is offering us plenty of information.’ Taking shape on the beachfront at Lincoln Road, a short walk from the Miami Beach Convention Center, the installation continues Erlich’s preoccupation with the natural world. Internationally recognized for representing Argentina at the 49th Venice Biennale, where he presented Swimming Pool (1999), an iconic piece now part of the permanent collection of the 21st century art museum in Kanazawa, Japan, and participated in the Whitney Biennale. in 2000 with the work Rain (1999).
The project has been curated by Ximena Caminos, who met Erlich in 1992 when she produced his first exhibition at Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires. The pair joined forces again in 1999, after Caminos commissioned his seminal Swimming Pool for the Venice Biennale. Of this latest public art project, they are optimistic that site-specific interventions like Erlich’s beachfront backup can have a powerful influence on communities. ‘Order of Importance, like an image from a contemporary Pompeii, or a future relic, alludes to our fragile position in the large universal canvas,’ Caminos says.
‘Reflecting on the dynamism of traffic itself, perhaps the most interesting question would be, “Quo vadis?” I would extend this question not only to the individual driver but to human society and our ambitions,’ says Erlich, who is based between Montevideo and Buenos Aires – the latter notorious for its choking traffic. ‘We persevere in the production of an industrial reality despite the disruption it unleashes on the natural order of this world.’
Order of Importance, 1 – 15 December. leandroerlich.art