Ernesto Neto: The Edges of the World

As you enter Ernesto Neto’s new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, a sign asks you to ‘be gentle with Edges of the World’. This alerts us to the inclusive nature and fragility of Neto’s work, which seems to say that delight may be found in the material world and its inherent vulnerability. Neto transforms the Brutalist shell of the Hayward gallery using soft, yielding fabric to create organic, internal spaces. The hard concrete, functionality of the gallery is deliberately subverted. What epitomizes the Modernist, South Bank vision of reason and order becomes overgrown with a fecund fantasy of colours, textures and scents.

Entering Neto’s constructed environment is a return to the pleasures rather than the fears of childhood. Arching above our heads, ‘Horizonmembranenave employs a skeletal frame over which the artist pulls diaphanous fabric across wooden ribs that resemble dinosaur bones. A long twisting tunnel gently changes colour and beckons the visitor with the scent of Camomile flowers, which have been slipped into pockets sewn into the translucent skin.

Across the entire top floor with view over London, Neto has fashioned this environment by lowering a ceiling of his trademark fine mesh. Surfaces curve and slope in biomorphic uncertainty. Even the floor at one point is strangely altered so that you must tread gingerly across highly sprung fabric that resists your weighty footprint thereby gently lowering you to the firm concrete flooring below.

Scattered across the gallery are several staircases leading to viewing platforms that elevate you up through holes cut into the fabric ceiling like tree houses giving views across a rainforest canopy. Elsewhere, soft tubes like elongated stockings or gloves are inserted into this delicate wall providing proximity to other visitors who are constantly seen or heard around you.

This is a show that demands transitions through the gallery space mediated by abrupt physical changes. Installations become architectural experiences offering shelter and perceptual discovery.

Outside, Neto has made full use of Hayward’s large terraces even to extent of setting up a bathing pool with exotic, pointy-headed pavilions in saffron yellow obscurely titled ‘H2O-SFLV’ The evening I visited, two stately middle aged ladies bobbed around in their floral one piece swim suits as if on an expedition to Margate, but this time they commanded a view across London’s South Bank and an entire pool to themselves having duly arranged a reservation, as requested. Perhaps the necessary display of skin explains the polite request to refrain from taking pictures.

 On the other side of the building it’s possible to enjoy a low-rise concrete wall that leads you up and down a narrow gauge in an infinite loop. ‘Walking to the Future’ returns the visitor to the balancing games of youth. It also hints at a Medieval floor maze designed to elucidate meaning through physical movement and contemplation.

Ernesto Neto has become a Brazilian ‘Willy Wonker’ conjuring up remarkable transformations. By cutting and shaping cloth he simulates the wiliness and unpredictability of Nature. But this is not the natural world ‘red in tooth and claw’ but a softened experience of the material world. Even the looping wall that invites us to wobble around, as we search for our centre of gravity, gently catches our fall with a bed of bark chippings. Neto’s world is exuberant but any edge or menace is removed.

At the Hayward you will find temporary relief from the churning city beyond, where you will encounter unfolding stimuli without any disturbance. Unlike Wonker’s chocolate factory, the dark side of existence is adroitly trumped by sensuality.