Ernesto Neto’s Immersive Art
From DASartes (dasartes.com.br), the oldest magazine of the Visual Arts in Brazil. Since 2015, DASartes’ magazine has been 100% digital and free.
ERNESTO NETO PRESENTS NEW IMMERSIVE INSTALLATION IN HOUSTON
This summer, Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts presents Ernesto Neto: SunForceOceanLife, … one of the biggest crochet works so far from the artist. Suspended from the ceiling, the work forms a monumental labyrinth of colored paths defined by complex nets. The paths spiral out of the center of the gallery and create an interactive multisensory sculptural installation for visitors to explore.
…
SunForceOceanLife is a spiral structural marvel that highlights the cyclical relationship between the sun and the sea to produce life on Earth. This massive installation fills Cullinan Hall with yellow, orange, and green materials that are sewn by hand in myriad patterns and stitched together in a spiral formation. … Each crocheted section is filled with soft plastic balls underfoot that move with each step, forcing visitors to concentrate on their internal balance and on the stability of their own bodies.
…
“SunForceOceanLife is about fire, the vital energy that makes life on this planet possible,” said the artist Ernesto Neto. “Every time we finished a crochet spiral with the polymer cord used in this work, we burned both ends with fire in a gesture that evokes meditation, prayer, and other sacred rites. I hope that the experience of this work is like a song sun in gratitude to the gigantic fireball that we call the sun, a gesture of thanks for the energy, truth, and power that it shares with us by touching our earth, our oceans, our life.
SunForceOceanLife also unites the disciplines of art and culture with biology and cosmology: it directly involves the body like a happy dance or meditation, inviting us to relax, breathe, and decouple our body from our conscious mind. The sensation of floating, with the body wrapped in the fruits of our crochet work, brings to mind the hammock: the indigenous invention par excellence that lifts us up and connects us to the knowledge and the traditions of our ancestors.”