LTC 544-2019 Temporary Public Art Project, "Order of Importance", Leandro Erlich MIAMI BEACH
OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER
NO. LTC # 544-2019 LETTER TO COMMISSION
TO: Mayor Dan Gelber and Members «i the Cit Commission
FROM: Jimmy L. Morales, City Manager
DATE: October 7, 2019
SUBJECT: Temporary Public Art Project, "Or.-r of Importance", Leandro Erlich
The purpose of this Letter to the Commission ("LTC") is to announce our most recent
Temporary Public Art initiative from the Department of Tourism and Culture.
The City's first temporary public art initiative will launch December 1-15, 2019 during
Miami Art Week with a monumental site-specific installation by internationally renowned
Argentinean conceptual artist Leandro Erlich. Order of Importance will be a temporary
intervention on the shores of the 17th Street Beach comprised of 66 life-sized sand
sculptures of cars and trucks, which will be open for public interaction throughout the
duration of the fifteen-day exhibition.
By recasting the 21St century traffic jam in sand, Erlich alludes to time in both a pictorial
and material sense. The sand replicas of vehicles frozen in time symbolize a harsh and
rigid modernity that is at odds with the natural and porous material of which they are made.
Throughout his career, Erlich has combined elements of sculpture, architecture, and
theater to create surreal environments that disrupt the audience's natural view of the
world. He is internationally renowned for representing Argentina at the 49th Venice
Biennale where he exhibited Swimming Pool(1999), a landmark piece that is now part of
the permanent collection at the 21st Century Museum of Art of Kanazawa (Japan) and
participated in the Whitney Biennial in 2000 with the work Rain (1999). Earlier this year
Erlich became the first non-Chinese artist to occupy the entire exhibition space at the
CAFAM (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing), China's premiere museum, with the
show The Confines of The Great Void.
The administration is very excited by the international recognition an installation such as
this will receive, especially given the focused audience and media presence during Miami
Art Week. We are also certain that this site-specific work will draw day visitors from
throughout Miami-Dade County, by intriguing residents who will want to see the installation
in person, while interacting with the Instagrammable piece and exploring the surrounding
city scape.
The Resilient 305 Strategy calls for the Greater Miami and the Beaches area to
communicate the concept of resilience by creating an emotional connection to the concept
through the arts. Order of Importance invites the viewer to contemplate the shocks and
stressors traffic, coastal erosion, and climate change have on our community.
The funding for this project was identified at the March 22, 2019 FCWPC, where it was
recommended that the Cultural Arts Council be the funding source for a temporary art
installation of this nature. This recommendation was approved by the City Commission at
its April 10, 2019 meeting via Resolution 2019-30804.
Please find below, renderings of Order of Importance.
For more information, please contact Matt Kenny at mattkenny(a�miamibeachfl.gov or
x6597.
cc: Marcia Monserrat, Chief of Staff, City Manager
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Each vehicle is comprised of countless micro-particles that each contain the possibility to
create an infinite variety of structures, or to vanish with a guest of wind. These life-size
sculptures of automobiles translate a great symbol of modernity into its own ghost,
sinking into the sand as they disappear from view. Solid matter is rendered as porous
as air.
Order of Importance invokes time on a grand scale, reminding us that we are all
traveling down a road made of sand, but never without humor, never without grace.
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Our lives are but specks of dust falling through the fingers of time. Like sands of the
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