Tomio Koyama Gallery
Closes in 9 days
The works of 1964-born Ernesto Neto now on show at the Tomio Koyama Gallery and Gallery Koyanagi are rooted in the Neo-Concrete abstract art movement that started in Brazil in the late 1950s. Neo-Concrete artists created abstract but organic, poetic and sensual works. Long after the movement's heyday, Neto is still using some of its ideas about organic and plastic art.
His works are large, in vivid, pop colors, interactive and three dimensional. In this show, one of the two exhibition rooms is covered completely with a thick, soft, white mattress. Small, candy-colored, flat discs and long batons made of elastic fabric and filled with beads are scattered all over the space, which is permeated with a fragrant, sweet, but slightly artificial scent. Though it feels like a playground, at the same time, it's impossible to shrug off a sense of harmony emanating from the installation.
In the second room, giant appendages that resemble three-dimensional inkblots stretch from the ceiling to floor. Many of the sculptures suggest a scientific influence, recalling as they do images of plant and animal cells that could have been taken from a microscope slide and blown up to monumental sizes.
With these giant, interactive works, Neto turns spectators into childlike researchers who are eager to experiment and play with such pleasant-to-touch pieces.
