Opening on Saturday, September 12 from 11am to 6pm
Xippas gallery, in partnership with GALLERIA CONTINUA, is pleased to present, for the first time in France, Classroom, an installation by Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich, at the Xippas Paris space. Following his exhibition at the Grand Palais, Leandro Erlich takes over the gallery space with a selection of works, including several previously unseen pieces.
The exhibition opens with a suspended house, uprooted from the ground: Pulled by the roots BOG. Our roots, our points of attachment – these could serve as the guiding thread of the exhibition, which continues with a series of works entitled Draft-Bazza: various models of typewriters covered with sand and cracked, displayed beneath glass domes as though they had only just been unearthed.
Like fragile relics from another era, buried beneath the sand, they evoke a bygone time – the pre-digital era, when communication was slower and working methods were fundamentally different. Buried beneath the surface, these typewriters summon the memory of a generation while echoing the today’s society that has been profoundly transformed, inviting us to reflect on what we have become.
These works accompany visitors, both physically and mentally, towards the next installation: Classroom. Immersed in darkness, viewers discover, through a large pane of glass, a life-size reconstruction of a 1970s classroom. Desks, chairs, blackboard, world maps, cupboards – everything is there. The peeling walls bear the marks of time, the windows appear fogged, while the furniture and stained floor are covered with a fine layer of dust. The space seems abandoned, frozen in time and marked by the passing of years.
Yet visitors do not simply stand before an archaeological “site”: they are literally projected into the room. Through subtle lighting effects, their reflection – ghostly and almost unreal – appears within the space itself. The silhouettes of other visitors merge with their own, as though they were on the other side, seated at the classroom desks. A contemporary presence haunting this abandoned classroom, the viewer is no longer merely an observer but becomes what Fabrice Cousteau has described as a “spect-actor”.
While the installation evokes a sense of nostalgia, it ca, also be deeply unsettling. The mirror does not reflect reality but transport us, as adults, back into a situation belonging to childhood. Memories of school resurface through an experience that is at once intimate and collective. The ghosts we embody within the classroom invite us to reflect upon the paths that have led us to become the adults we are today.
More broadly, the installation questions education and its place within contemporary French society, where declining birth rates have led to the closure of numerous classrooms. The school thus appears not only as a place of learning, but also as a space for socialisation where relationships with others are formed. In this installation, as throughout his work, Leandro Erlich appropriates everyday situations. Through the use of trompe-l’oeil, mirrors and hidden structures, he disrupts our perception of reality, transforming the ordinary into a space that is both uncanny and uncertain. Fascinated by infinity, he constructs environments in which the observed subject is constantly inverted, opening up an imaginary and timeless dimension with unstable boundaries, and inviting audiences into an immersive experience that is both singular and shared.
