In her practice, Erlanger builds on the definition of “home” as merely a building and expands it to encompass a neighborhood, a continent, a world, or even a feeling. Erlanger creates a sculptural landscape that extends the themes and concerns she explored in her previous bodies of work, such as the 20th-century myth of social mobility considered in the snowglobes Split Level Paradise (2020), as well as the interconnectedness of humans with the built environment in Ida (2018).

The exhibition starts in an exploded recreation of one of Erlanger’s film sets, riffing on the psychology of interior spaces as well as acting as a platform for watching her new short film, Appliance. The film dovetails Erlanger’s research into the history and cultural significance of domestic technologies (i.e. refrigerators, ovens), specifically focusing on how their operations have been considered interchangeable with human bodily functions. Cut-outs in the walls of the installation act as portals into an adjacent landscape containing large-scale planet sculptures. These works map an altered view of Interstate 95, the main thoroughfare of the Northeastern U.S., and its surroundings. Erlanger’s planet sculptures make visible the immense, often hidden infrastructures such as roadways and the electrical grid that connect suburbia to centers of capital and exchange.

The dioramas rely on an institutional language of display more typically found in natural history museums, where such enclosed scenes suggest what we see exists only in the past. Here, Erlanger proposes models of different speculative landscapes and futures. Erlanger’s stainless steel arrows suggest an internal conflict often evoked by home: the desires to both return and escape. 

Olivia Erlanger (b. 1990, New York) lives and works in New York. Through her sculpture, writing, and filmmaking, Erlanger explores American dreams and delusions. Recent and forthcoming solo and two-person exhibitions include If Today Were Tomorrow at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2024); Humour in the Water Coolant at ICA London (2024); Appliance at Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna (2022); Home is a Body at Soft Opening, London (2020); Split-level Paradise at Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2020); Ida at Motherculture, Los Angeles (2018); Poison Remedy Scapegoat at Human Resources, Los Angeles (2018); and mouths filled with pollen at And Now, Dallas (2018). Notable group exhibitions include Nonmemory at Hauser Wirth, Los Angeles (2023); Dream Journal at Company Gallery, New York (2023); On Failure, at Soft Opening, London (2023); The Heavy Light Show at Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Shell at Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles (2022); The Kick Inside at Museum X, Shanghai (2022); Liquid Life at Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker (2021); Psychosomatic at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles (2021); In Situ at Marianne Boesky, New York (2021); Winterfest at Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2020); Haunted Haus at Swiss Institute, New York (2020); DIS Presents: What do people do all day? at Kunsthalle Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2020); No Space, Just a Place at Daelim Museum, Seoul (2020); and For a Dreamer of Houses at Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2020).

Erlanger is the author of Appliance (Wild Seeds, 2022) and, with architect Luis Ortega Govela, the co-author of Garage (MIT Press, 2018). Her writing has appeared in publications including Tank Magazine, PIN UP, Flash Art, and Harvard Design Magazine, and a forthcoming catalog essay through Spector Books in 2024. Erlanger’s work is in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; KADIST, San Francisco, California; X Museum, Shanghai, China; among others.

Olivia Erlanger: If Today Were Tomorrow will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Hatje Cantz containing newly commissioned texts about the artist’s practice, as well as contributions focusing on the interplay between architecture, psychology, and science fiction.

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