Um dia todos fomos peixes

The Blueproject Foundation presents "Um dia todos fomos peixes", the first solo exhibition of the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto in Barcelona. The show, which can be seen at Il Salotto from November 10, 2017 to April 25, 2018, is presented as an immersive, colorful and sensory installation, designed and produced especially for the Blueproject Foundation space. 

Worked around the concepts of water, sea, land and, in general, our
relationship with nature, the installation offers the giant representation of a fish in which the user can enter to relax and meditate. This unpublished work allows to
discover the line of work that Ernesto Neto has been pursuing in the recent years and
that can also be seen in the current Venice Biennale with the work Um Sagrado
lugar (A Sacred Place), produced and presented also in collaboration with the
Blueproject Foundation.

"An egg, an earth, egg earth, mother earth, while we get involved in the day-to-day policies, the birds fly through the air, the fish swim in the wide sea, the old ocean, we are always sailing the noble ocean from where life came, an unattainable horizon waits for us in the infinite, water air, water air, in a continuous oscillation, an eternal breathing, water air water air, overturned blue; Where does this blue come from? Where does this blue come from? water air, water air, in the silence I ask myself, in silence I connect, feet on the ground, head in the air, heart in the middle of the road. Center of balance, strength and truth, the mind lies, the heart does not lie, connected between sky and sea, I receive the cure and the teachings of our ancestral fish who we once were, floating in the sea, the crystals that purify us and re-balance our body, our continuity between heaven and earth. In front of the cyber, day-to-day shouts, from the time ripped from our lives it is good to make silence, to breathe, to feel our surroundings, the serene rhythm of the here and now; when we stop, the world turns and when we turn we have a rhythm, a cadence, an organic movement, that brings us wisdom, a non-rational wisdom, a spiritual wisdom, this is the lost dimension, the missing link towards the eternal return, towards the Uroboros, towards the feeling of the infinite within oneself, the encounter of the whole with its parts, beyond the dialectical state of language and its limitations to approach the magic of art. Art water art air art. Inside the fish, ancestral dreams, inside the fish I relax and feel, I do not think, I just feel, the air, the water, the time, I feel inside me an eternity, I feel my pores breathing, I feel life, the earth, the ocean, dark, mysterious and tender, wet and infinite, an ocean inside another outside, I feel my fingers, I feel the drumming of the crochet, I feel myself and others, I feel another me, I feel the speech, I feel a lost song, meeting, I feel salt on my tongue, what language we speak fish, eternal tender fish, teach us fish, fish, fish swimming, nothing fish, thanks fish, one day we were all fish".

(Text written by Ernesto Neto for the exhibition "Um dia todos fomos peixes").

Ernesto Neto belongs to the large group of artists who follow the path marked by that other generation of Brazilian artists who broke with modernist schemes in the late fifties and early sixties, artists who, like Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, try to eliminate the absolute nature of art to bring it closer to life. This new notion of artistic creation proposed the experience and interaction of the viewer, an argument that is at the center of the aesthetic concerns of Ernesto Neto.

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1964, Ernesto Neto has exhibited his work in many of the great centers and galleries around the world such as the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Southbank
Center of London, the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMa), the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Museum of Modern Art of Sao Paulo or the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO). In addition, he has represented his country in the Biennales of Sao Paulo, Sydney and Venice.