Leandro Erlich: Ball Game (2018) - Buenos Aires, Argentina
To mark the first-ever Olympism in Action Forum and the YOG Buenos Aires 2018, the IOC commissioned Leandro Erlich to create a large-scale installation bringing to life the Olympic values.
Known for playing with human perception, Leandro Erlich presented Ball Game, an ensemble of five large-scale hyper-realistic sport balls (football, basketball, tennis, volleyball and golf), that encouraged the audience to experience the delight of moving beyond the everyday and into the festive terrain of Erlich’s humour and imagination.
The work was first displayed at the Olympism in Action Forum, where members of the Olympic Movement and civil society discussed key topics related to sport and society. Spectators were invited to move Erlich’s ensemble together through the city’s public space to the Parque Tres de Febrero at the city’s Planetarium Galileo Galilei in the neighbourhood of Palermo in a performative action.
Only through the collective effort could spectators get the monumental balls rolling. While the commission was fully funded by the IOC, the city worked in close collaboration with the artist’s team on the permitting for public space needed to accommodate the project.
Gallery
The Artist
Born in 1973 in Argentina
Lives and works between Paris, Buenos Aires and Montevideo
Over the past two decades, the work of Leandro Erlich has been shown internationally and featured in the permanent collections of major museums and private collectors.
He has realised solo shows at major international museums, including the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2017), the HOW Art Museum (Shanghai, 2018), MALBA (Buenos Aires) and CAFAM (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China, 2019). In December 2022, Liminal, his first anthological exhibition in the USA, opened at PAMM in Miami, USA. In 2023, Erlich’s first anthology exhibition in Europe was presented at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, Italy.
Erlich began his professional career at 18 with a solo exhibition at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires and went on to study at the Core Program, an artist residency in Houston, Texas (Glassell School of Art, 1998). There, he developed his signature installations Swimming Pool and Living Room. In the year 2000, he participated in the Whitney Biennale with the work Rain. In 2001, he represented Argentina at the 49th Venice Biennale with Swimming Pool, a landmark piece that is part of the permanent collection at The 21st Century Museum of Art of Kanazawa (Japan) and the Voorlinden Museum (Netherlands).
Watch the video: The Ball Game of YOG Artist in Residence Leandro Erlich takes to the streets of Buenos Aires
"The sport balls are a simple visual expression of the unifying spirit of friendship, excellence, and respect…. faced with the challenge of moving these monumental objects, collaboration and fraternity become our natural response. This game invites us to move forward together, inspired by the Olympic values."
Leandro Erlich
"In Buenos Aires, sports and art are passionately lived and are an essential part of our identity. This is the opportunity for all of us to be inspired by Olympic values and to share this celebration with the world."
Enrique Avogadro
Culture Minister of the City of Buenos Aires