Ernesto Neto: Anthropodino

Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto (born 1964) has won legions of fans with his soft, biomorphic sculptural installations that invite viewers to touch and poke them, seducing and activating all of the senses at once. Often using a white stretchy material stuffed with styrofoam pellets and sometimes aromatic spices, Neto aims to provoke an experience of powerful bodily sensuousness in his audience, whom he encounters in a variety of settings, from galleries and museums to outdoor public sites. "Anthropodino" chimes with a number of large shows opening internationally in 2010, and provides a first substantial overview of Neto's career, with a focus on the artist's hugely popular 2009 installation of that name, exhibited at the Park Avenue Armory (where it filled the 55,000 square foot hall). This much-lauded work, which draws upon every element of Neto's practice, and which was memorably characterized by one reviewer as "art that loves you back," serves neatly as a springboard to appraise the full range of the artist's achievements over the past two decades. Published in collaboration with the Brazilian publisher Cobogó.