NEW YORK: Ernesto Neto at Bonakdar Jancou - review of exhibitions - Brief Article

Art in America, June, 1999 by David Ebony

In his previous New York exhibition, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto featured a group of works that resembled women's nylon stockings suspended from floor to ceiling in dramatic diagonals. Bulging at one end, the elongated hosiery was stuffed with pounds of pungent ground spices, which anchored each piece to the floor. While a major part of that show explored the sense of smell, the works in this recent exhibition have to do with the sense of touch. Titled "Navedenga and the Ovaloids," the scent-free show focused on the sculptural possibilities and sensual suggestiveness of the flexible Lycra fabric.

Each of the five works on view was interactive to a certain degree. Filling one room was the centerpiece of the exhibition, Navedenga, a large, floor-to-ceiling tent-like structure made of milky white, sheer Lycra. Neto coined the title by combining two Portuguese words, nave, meaning ship, and denga, a term that refers to the womb and to female sexuality and fertility in general. The title might be loosely translated as "Goddess Ship," the name of a similar work which Neto presented at last fall's Silo Paulo Bienal [see A.i.A., May '99; also see article on the Sydney Biennale in this issue].

In the evocative New York piece, the tent walls were gathered and tied tightly with ropes attached to the ceiling. The taut surfaces were weighted to the floor with sand-filled Lycra bags. In one corner, a long, vertical crevice allowed visitors who had agreed to take off their shoes to pull aside the stretchable cloth and enter the sculpture. Inside, one was surrounded by soft membranes and bathed in diffused light streaming through the translucent material from a skylight. A strong sense of calm and a hushed silence enveloped explorers of this ethereal and meditative enclosure.

Elsewhere in the show were a number of tall blocky shapes, about chest high and around three feet wide on each side. Made of the same milky-toned fabric, cut and sewn, they are filled with tiny Styrofoam beads. Each of these oversized bean bags has a narrow, cloth-lined opening into which you can stick your arm, as in a long glove, to poke around the squishy stuffing.

In spite of its delicate and understated materials, Neto's sculpture is provocative and adventurous. Influenced to a certain degree by Brazilian artists such as Hello Oiticica and Lygia Clark, Neto combines an almost Pop sensibility--akin to Oldenburg's early soft sculptures or Chamberlain's foam-rubber couches--with a desire to engage his audience very directly in an exploration of the sensual properties of sculpture. He manages to achieve a compelling blend of the visual and the tactile.