Images credit: Ernesto Neto, Installation view anthropodino, Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY, 2009. Photos: James Ewing.
I had dinner with my friend Leslie in Manhattan on Sunday night. Leslie, being always in the know, pointed me toward an installation at the Park Avenue Armory. On exhibit there is a site specific installation by Ernesto Neto, a contemporary Brazilian artist. I just learned that he is inspired by the neo-concretism movement who "wanted to equate art with living organisms in a kind of organic architecture, and invite the viewer to be an active participant." Neto's installation at the Armory is exactly that.
This extraordinary work is on view through June 14th.
definition of neo-concretism:
Brazilian movement was formed in reaction to the mathematical certainty of Concrete Art. Artists like Ltgia Clark, Helio Oiticica, Amilcar de Castro were the groups chief members, and they introduced subjective, symbolic, and organic dimensions to their work. According to the poet-critic Ferreira Gullar’s 1959 “Neoconcrete Manifesto”, Neoconcretism was born of the need to express the complex reality of modern man within the structural language of the new plastic art. It denies the validity of scientific and positivist attitudes in art. It restates the problem of expression, incorporating the new ‘verbal’ dimensions characteristic of neofigurative constructivist art.
