While Sonnier and Matta deal with
the senses of touch and sight, Rio
de Janiero artist Ernest Neto
explores as well the sense of
smell, a realm artists usually
ignore. Walking down the hall
toward the gallery, visitors smell
Neto's show before they see it. It
has the wonderful, pungent aroma
of an Indian spice shop. In this
New York solo debut, the artist
presents sculptures made of flour
and powdered spices, such as
tumeric, cloves and pepper,
stuffed into women's sheer nylon
stockings. A number of the
stockings stretch from the ceiling
to the floor, with several pounds
of spice weighting them to the
ground. Some simply lie on the
floor, like sacks overflowing with
powders of warm, earthy colors.
At first, the works recall the
sculptures of Anish Kapoor, as the
spices look like dry pigment.
There is also a similarity in both
artists' use of organic forms.
Neto's, however, seem more often
to refer to liquids. His expert
use of nylon stockings results in
works that resemble large wads of
bubble gum or bladders filled with
some squishy substance. The
sculptures seem viscous rather
than solid. In this impressive
show, Neto has made a dreamlike,
evocative environment by using the
simplest of means.
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