PARIS.- Xippas gallery, in partnership with GALLERIA CONTINUA, is presenting, 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 in Paris, 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 Bousteau has described as a “spect-actor.”*
While the installation evokes a sense of nostalgia, it can also be deeply unsettling. The mirror does not reflect reality but transports 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 school classes. 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’œil, 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.
*Leandro Erlich, Grand Palais, ditions Beaux Arts Hors Srie, June 2026, p.3
Leandro Erlich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1973. He lives and works between Buenos Aires, Uruguay and Paris.
Leandro Erlich participated in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and represented Argentina at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001) with his installation Swimming Pool, a work that brought him international recognition. Today, the installation is part of the permanent collection of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (alongside Infinite Staircase), as well as of the Voorlinden Museum in the Netherlands.
He has received the UNESCO Prize (Istanbul, 2001), the Premio Leonardo (National Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, 2000), and an award from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (Buenos Aires, 1992). In 2006, he was nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize, and in 2017 he received the Roy Neuberger Award.
Recent exhibitions include Amos Rex in Helsinki (2025–2026), Weightless at the Kunstmuseum, Germany (2025), Oltre la Soglia at Palazzo Reale, Milan, Liminal at the Prez Art Museum Miami (2022), the travelling exhibition A Tenso in Brazil, Seeing is not Believing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2022), and Btiment on Nodeul Island, Seoul, South Korea (2022).
His permanent installations can be found around the world, including Concrete Coral for The ReefLine in Miami, La carte, l’ombre de la ville in Bordeaux, France, and The Laundry – Little Shop on the Island in Japan, among others.
Leandro Erlich’s works are also held in the public collections of numerous prestigious institutions, including the Centre Pompidou (France), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (USA), Tate Modern (London, UK), the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (Italy), and the Voorlinden Museum in Wassenaar, the Netherlands.
