Author: Ernesto Neto
Cotton, polypropylene, lycra, buckwheat shells, lavender and foam.
350 x 925 x 825 cm.
This is a large architecturally organic installation that shines with light and colour, converting its encapsulated space into a tactile world where its shape, material and scale are investigated.
An interior curve reveals a foetal shape; a floor of thick foam serves as a platform for various small soft sculptures that can be interpreted as amoeba shapes or letters from an old alphabet. Neto uses these symbols to suggest the parallel emerging from live organisms and organised culture.
These small elements of red, pink, green and yellow colour have an echo and complement the softest, yet still bright, colour of the ceiling. As the visitor enters and activates the space, the elements on the floor are repositioned and moved, presenting a colour composition that is always changing or writing and re-writing a story that never ends.
This installation is the continuation of a series of Neto works that serve as both sculpture and constructed environment, that show the mysterious ease of the artist when taking on structures in an engineering and architectural design manner.
Using simple materials such as lycra and polyester, cotton, types of earth, sand or rice in order to transcend their most trivial purpose, Neto refers to his ancestors of neo-concrete and Arte Povera, changing these materials in complex spatial configurations that challenge the notion of the static, balance, gravity and tension.