Jersey City’s Liberty Science Center is celebrating their 30th anniversary, and they’re doing so in a truly unique way.
The center has officially launched its Big Art initiative, a new arts program with two inaugural installations, one of which is by Argentine conceptual artist Leandro Erlich, according to a press release.
Titled The Building, Erlich’s installation features a model of a NYC brownstone on the ground. Visitors are able to climb across its facade and, as a giant mirror reflects the scene, rely on the power of optical illusion to pretend they’re scaling the side of the building and hanging from its fire escapes and window ledges.
And, in true NYC fashion, the brownstone sits atop a deli on the ground floor.
The exhibition gives “spect-actors,” as Erlich likes to call them, the chance to challenge the laws of gravity as they drape themselves across the building’s walls and interact with the model.
The Building is part of Erlich’s acclaimed Bâtiment series, and this exhibition marks the first time the series has been brought to the New York area. This series has previously touched down in Paris, London, Buenos Aires, Donetsk, and the Echigo-Tsumari region of Japan. Each piece in the series represents something architecturally relating to the location in which it is installed.
“Much of my work, including the Bâtiment series—and, by extension, The Building—finds its basis in questions I have about the way we perceive reality,” says Erlich.
“I’m excited to be showing this piece at the Liberty Science Center, because art, the way I conceive of it, exists to pose questions about our understanding of the world; in many ways science achieves what we know it to the same way—by asking those very same questions,” he added.
The Building will be on display through the summer at Jersey City’s Liberty Science Center located at 222 Jersey City Blvd, Jersey City, only about a 30-minute drive from Manhattan.
You can learn more on their website.