As the first academic activity of the “Leandro Erlich: The Confines of the Great Void” exhibition, CAFAM invited the artist, co-curator Andre Duprat and Zhang Zikang, Professor Qiu Zhijie from the School of Experimental Art at CAFA, Professor Wang Min’an from the School of Humanities at Tsinghua University, and Professor Zhou Yufang from the School of Architecture at CAFA for a dialogue on July 11, 2019.
Duprat began the dialogue by talking about how people experience art. He believes that good art should transcend the limit of language and culture, and let the audience understand without prior knowledge. He is against the monopoly of art framed by the so-called professionals. On the other hand, museums should believe in the audience’s ability to read the artworks by themselves, and curators and public educators should inspire the audience instead of intervening too much in their understanding. He believes that Leandro Erlich’s exhibition is exactly so, because there can be a thousand interpretations to his works, and the audience should feel free to interpret by themselves.
Andre Duprat, co-curator of the exhibition and Director of Argentina National Museum of Fine Arts
Following Duprat’s talk, artist Leandro Erlich agreed that communication is the most important in the understanding of art. The communication is not only between art and the audience, but also among the audience. He is deeply moved by the fact that the communication is happening between Beijing and Argentine, probably the most far-away two places in the world, through his exhibition. He is restrained in giving explanations to his works, because he wants to leave more space to the audience to explore the works by themselves.
Leandro Erlich, artist
He also highlighted the relationship between the grand history and our individual experience. He believes that our experience of what’s real or fake is something that cannot be passed on by history, as the history is macroscopical, while our cognition and understanding of the world is accumulated generation by generation. That’s why he tries to blend our daily life into many of his fictional works, to directly touch upon our familiar life in an unfamiliar way.
Erlich said he likes the mysterious part of his work. Because that could drive us to continuously think, explore, imagine and expect the expected future.
Prof. Qiu Zhijie, however, doesn’t think of interactivity as the most interesting part of Erlich’s works. It is instead the “non-interactive part” that he’s most interested in. He also doesn’t believe in “understanding without explanation”, because that kind of understanding is usually under a premise that we already share the same language, or the translation has already been done, under a globalized context. Speaking of cross-cultural, Qiu believes that the most cross-cultural artworks are not Erlich’s, but are actually the works that unconsciously influence people, such as the calligraphy scroll hung on the wall of one’s living room. It’s not necessary to exaggerate interactivity, he concluded.
Prof. Wang Min'an
Prof. Wang Min’an regards Erlich as an artist who’s especially sensitive to the concept of space. Space is being talked about in almost all the cultural fields, and according to Wang, there are usually three patterns: First, in Marxist theories, space is itself a commodity that bears historical, economic and political intentions; The second pattern, initiated by Walter Benjamin, highlights the emotional experience of the space, emphasizing that the experience in a certain space could have enduring influence on one’s body, emotion and memories; The third pattern is how Erlich’s works discuss space. He takes space as a cognitive subject. There’s strong physical perception of space in his works, and people believe that memory lies in all sensual perception. When we perceive The Swimming Pool, Building or Changing Rooms, we are actually feeling them with our memories. In usually occasions, our perception tallies with our memories, but as we are inside Erlich’s works, we’ll find ourselves in an enormous heterotopia - an enclosed space that contradicts with other space and leads to illusions. What Erlich creates at the exhibition is a multi-dimensional heterotopia, where we throw away our daily experience and habits, and replace them by a strange, new experience. “I forgot my past, while not knowing where I am now,” summarized by Prof. Wang.
Prof. Zhou Yufang
Professor Zhou Yufang from School of Architecture at CAFA then said it would be difficult to explain Erlich’s works in the perspective of architecture, because Erlich’s works are anti-experience, and trained people tend to comment his work with their habitual memories in the field of architecture. Instead, he commented on the significance of seeing Erlich’s works from inside - he believes that it’s meaningless for people to just take pictures of Erlich’s works from outside, because that kind of photo can be achieved anywhere else - it’s important to feel the space by oneself.
In the end, Zhang Zikang, co-curator of the exhibition and Director of CAFAM, speaks about the meaning of holding Erlich’s solo exhibition at CAFAM. According to him, what defines a museum is that they would always put academics in front of business. However, although Erlich is successful business-wise, CAFAM doesn’t think it would contradict with the academic nature of his works. Different from exhibiting a famous painting, which is more about knowledge dissemination, Erlich’s exhibition is about inspiring ourselves through new cognitive experience.
Time: 2019.07.11 14:30
Venue: CAFAM Lecture Hall
Guests (in alphabetical order):
Andre Duprat, co-curator of the “Leandro Erlich: The Confines of the Great Void” exhibition, Director of Argentina National Museum of Fine Arts
Leandro Erlich, artist
Qiu Zhijie, Dean of the School of Experimental Art at CAFA
Wang Min’an, Dean of the School of Humanities at Tsinghua University
Zhang Zikang, co-curator of the “Leandro Erlich: The Confines of the Great Void” exhibition, Director of CAFAM
Zhou Yufang, Deputy Dean of the School of Architecture at CAFA
Presenter: Wang Chunchen, Deputy Director of CAFAM
Compiled by Lu Yufan
Photo by Li Biao
