Art in the Auditorium - Lene Berg/Leandro Erlich 

Top: Lene Berg The Man in the Background, 2006. DV-Cam and 8mm transferred to DVD. Courtesy the artist.

The films of Lene Berg often form part of wider projects, which include text, collage, photography and installation. She is interested in exploring the tension between fiction and reality and public and private appearance, the personal histories constructed by individuals set against an ‘official’ public history.

The Man in the Background, premiered in the UK at the Whitechapel, consists of found home-movie images repeated with different narratives that gradually reveal a complex double life shaped by Cold War cultural politics. Leandro Erlich also examines the illusory nature of appearance but concentrates on perception rather.

Described as a ‘master of deception’, his work often contains an element of performance, whether choreographed as in El Ballet Studio, 2003 or based on audience interaction in Le Cabinet du Psychanalyste, 2005. Selected for the Whitechapel, these two works playfully question the ambiguity of given and accepted realities utilising Erlich’s ongoing interest in mirroring and duplication.