Ernesto Neto: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to present the work of Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto. In his first solo show in New York, Neto will exhibit an assembly of sculptures that incorporate female stockings and organic spices into the sophistication of form.

Placed together the sculptures create a kind of colony, a community or a family of like-minded objects. Even if similar, each of these objects has a distinctive body and smell. A sculpture made of a silk stocking filled with clove powder exhales the particularly rich scent of the flower. Others, its "relatives", are made of grounded pepper or turmeric. Each piece has its own character, richness and intensity.

Neto's procedure of work is determined by an aesthetics of precariousness, and his inescapable sense of plasticity. Applying a simple technique - tie a knot, fill the sack, throw it on the ground - Neto creates biomorphic objects which become, in turn, beings. The titles are onomatopoeias, "Puff", "Paff", "Poff". Small creatures that exist in their own time and substantial context. A stocking, a sock, a sack that contains and transpires color and odor. The focus is on the behavior of the piece: How does it fall? How does it affirm its poetic content? The spectator breathes, smells, lives the piece. The objects, these quasi-alive things, offer a sensory, and highly sensual, experience.