On the occasion of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Associazione Arte Continua presents Hybrids. Leandro Erlich at the Negozio Olivetti, curated by Marcello Dantas. The exhibition is an Official Collateral Event of the Biennale Arte 2026, hosted within the historic Negozio Olivetti in Piazza San Marco, a masterpiece of architecture by Carlo Scarpa. The space, entrusted by Generali Italia to FAI – Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano ETS, has since been opened to the public, preserved, managed, and enhanced by the institution.
Organized in collaboration with FAI and with the support of Galleria Continua, the exhibition brings together approximately twenty sculptures by Leandro Erlich, on view from 9 May to 22 November 2026, including several previously unseen works. These pieces give form to impossible yet strikingly familiar organisms: butterflies with ear-shaped wings, cabbages transformed into architectural structures, corals resembling metropolitan forms, and trees terminating in human feet. These hybrids suggest that art is not a mere ornament of the world, but a generative force that continues its creation, on the same level as the evolutionary and geochemical processes that have shaped the planet.
The project is part of the programme Arte all'Arte per le Città del Futuro, conceived by Mario Cristiani and realized by Associazione Arte Continua, which aims to foster new relationships between art, architecture, and landscape, restoring art to a central role in the construction of cities. Within this framework, Hybrids emerges as a poetic device capable of activating reflection on how artistic forms can influence the urban imagination and reshape the perception of shared spaces.
A belief in the transformative power of art over society and environment was also central to Adriano Olivetti. In his enterprise, guided by a humanistic vision and a strong educational impetus, products themselves were conceived as hybrids, designed not only to deliver technological excellence but also to embody aesthetic experience, cultural content, and even an ethical message. Art was structural to both the strategy and identity of the company, as it was in Olivetti Showrooms such as the one in Venice: hybrid spaces conceived less for the sale of products than for the transmission of ideas (early examples of what we now call concept stores) where art was omnipresent. This vocation is preserved and enhanced by FAI, which welcomes artistic projects such as this one, fostering an original dialogue with the history and spirit of the site.
Among the works on view, on the ground floor, Papillon (2021), in bronze, presents a butterfly whose wings take the form of ears, suggesting a reflection on communication as a biological phenomenon even before a technological one. In Caracol – The Pace of Evolution (2021), carved in white Carrara marble, a brain transforms into a snail, evoking evolution as a slow, stratified, and non-linear process. Chou (2023), in ceramic, merges a vegetal element with an architectural structure, questioning the relationship between nature, agriculture, and dwelling. White Coral (2025), in resin, establishes a parallel between coral growth and urban morphology, linking geological processes to metropolitan construction. Serpent (2021), in bronze, introduces a formal torsion that recalls continuous metamorphosis, while Quartz (2023), in glass, alludes to the mineral and temporal dimension of matter, rendering visible crystalline growth as a form of natural architecture. In Pies Tronco (2021), a tree trunk ends in shod human feet, generating a short circuit between vegetal organism and anthropomorphic presence. Draft – Bozza (2026), in resin and sand, reflects on the intermediate state between idea and completed form, emphasizing the processual dimension of sculpture.
The exhibition continues with works that expand the reflection on the relationship between nature and artifice. The Cloud – Bell (2024), made of extra-clear glass with digital printing on ceramic and enclosed in a wengé wood case, combines atmospheric lightness with an exhibition device, transforming the cloud into an architectural object.
Concrete Coral (2025) brings into tension industrial material and organic form, while Maison Fond (2022), in Carrara marble, suggests an architecture that melts or transforms, dissolving the stability of dwelling. Pulled by the Roots (2015) renders visible an uprooting that is at once physical and conceptual.
With Pixel Tree (2026), in bronze, the tree fragments into digital units, evoking the intersection between nature and technological language. La Carte (2026), in steel, resin, and light, introduces a cartographic and luminous dimension, suggesting an unstable and mutable geography.
The project is completed by Soprattutto (2020), a large-scale textile work in wool that expands the artist's research into surface and texture, and by a series of photographs that extend the investigation into hybridizations between space, perception, and the construction of reality.... read the rest of the article»
As underscored in the text by Emanuele Coccia, art acts upon the essence of things by blending distinct identities and allowing each form to inhabit another in an open and sensitive manner. The world that emerges from Erlich's works is an ecosystem in constant adjustment and readjustment, where irony and play between nature, culture, architecture, and the body converge into a single dynamic. The sculptures featured in Hybrids thus render visible an intimate and spiritual metamorphosis: the "hidden physiology" that accompanies every authentic artistic act.
Quotes
Daniela Bruno, FAI Cultural Director:
«The products of Olivetti were hybrids: technologically impeccable, but also designed to offer an aesthetic experience, a cultural content, and an ethical message. The Olivetti Showroom was conceived as a hybrid space in which architecture and art, marketing and culture, functionality and aesthetics, object and concept structurally coexist. Venice, too, is a hybrid: a built environment, an artificial island that appears to be an illusion - some even see it as Disneyland - but which is a work of history and of humankind, demonstrating, like Erlich's works, the capacity of ingenuity and art not only to prefigure but to recreate reality, ourselves and our environment, nature into a second nature, hybridized by humankind, by art, thought, and history, and vice versa.»
Mario Cristiani, President Associazione Arte Continua:
«The Arte Continua Association had the honor of participating in and supporting this journey by Leandro Erlich in Italy, which began at the Ponte Museo in Colle, UMoCA, where Leandro created his "Under the Arches of Time", and continued to Venice at the Negozio Olivetti. The generosity, passion, sensitivity, and patient involvement of Leandro, his studio team, and the Association made it possible to realize these beautiful projects. In these two works, Leandro highlighted his distinctive approach as an artist – both playful and profound – along with his delicate ability to bring forth unexpected ideas through play and irony, as well as his deep love for life, for people, and for what the surrounding context communicates to him. I would also like to thank FAI for welcoming us once again, following the first exhibition held with Antony Gormley and Lucio Fontana.»
Marcello Dantas, curator:
«Hybrids is an artistic speculation on the uncertain consequences of non-human intelligence hallucinating beings in the act of becoming something else.»
Leandro Erlich, artist:
«Hybrids articulates its narrative around a compound that does not aspire to purity, but emerges from the encounter – sometimes harmonious, sometimes unsettling – between distinct entities, where each form preserves its memory while becoming something else.»
Biographical Notes on Leandro Erlich
Leandro Erlich was born in Argentina in 1973 and lives and works between Paris, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo. Over the past two decades, his works have been exhibited internationally and have entered the permanent collections of major museums and private collections, including the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tate Modern, London; the Musée National d'Art Moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; MACRO, Rome; and the Israel Museum, among other significant cultural institutions.
Erlich has created major public works, including La Democracia del Símbolo at the Obelisk of Buenos Aires and at MALBA; Maison Fond, produced for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris; Bâtiment for Nuit Blanche in Paris; Ball Game for the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires; Port of Reflections, exhibited at MMCA in Seoul; and Palimpsest for the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in Japan. His monumental work La Carte, À l'ombre de la ville is now a permanent feature of the urban landscape of Bordeaux, France.
In recent years, he has held solo exhibitions at major international institutions, including the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Palazzo Reale, Milan; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; CAFA Art Museum, Beijing; MALBA, Buenos Aires; CCBB in several Brazilian cities; and PAMM, Miami, often attracting record attendance. More recently, he has participated in group exhibitions at Centre Pompidou-Metz, the Forest Festival of the Arts in Okayama (Japan), Ennova Art Museum, and Nanhai Art Center in China.
As a conceptual artist, his work challenges the foundations of our perception of reality and explores the capacity of art to raise questions through visual language. His creations seek to bridge the gap between museum or exhibition space and everyday experience, inviting viewers to actively participate in the construction of meaning.
Title: Leandro Erlich. Hybrids
Opening: May 09, 2026
Ending: November 22, 2026
Organization: Associazione Arte Continua / FAI – Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano ETS
Curator: Marcello Dantas
Place: Venezia, Negozio Olivetti
Address: Piazza San Marco 101 - 30124 Venezia (VE)
More info on this website: https://fondoambiente.it
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