The Swimming Pool
Leandro Erlich (born 1973) · 2004
In one of the open courtyards sits what looks like an ordinary swimming pool, edged with pale limestone and holding clear turquoise water with a ladder at one end. Then you notice that there are people at the bottom of it, fully dressed, walking about and waving up at you, and that they are perfectly dry. The water is only about ten centimetres deep, held on a sheet of glass, and underneath is an empty room painted the colour of pool walls. From above, the visitors below shimmer as if submerged. From below, you look up through the rippling water at the sky and at the faces of strangers peering down.
Leandro Erlich, an Argentine artist born in Buenos Aires, builds illusions out of everyday architecture: lifts that go nowhere, houses reflected in mirrors so that you seem to climb the walls. The trick here is simple and the effect is not. The thin layer of water does all the work, bending light enough to convince the eye while the glass takes the weight. Watch how the two audiences behave. People at the top lean over and laugh; people at the bottom stretch their arms toward the surface as if trying to swim. The work only exists when both groups are present, which is why it is placed at the meeting point of the free zone above and the ticketed zone below.
The Swimming Pool was commissioned for the opening in 2004 and quickly became the picture that stands for the whole museum. It has been reproduced on posters and in films, and entry to the underwater room is often managed with timed tickets because of the crowds. After the Noto earthquake of January 2024 the museum closed part of the building for repairs and the pool was inspected before it reopened. Take a photograph from the deck first, then go down; it is the second view, looking up at the sky through water you cannot touch, that people remember.
Did You Know? The water layer is only about ten centimetres deep, yet from the deck it convinces almost everyone that the people below are underwater.
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