6 | Variation on Color Seed Space Time Love, 2009
This installation consists of eight individual hanging sculptures. Neto has used industrially produced plastic netting in various colours and filled it with beans. In some places, different pieces of netting are woven into each other, as if to form internal bodily organs or outer extremities. At the same time, these elements can be interpreted as expressions for feminine and masculine principles – these are themes often found in Neto’s art.
Hanging forms are a leitmotif in Neto’s artistic practice. The starting point for these forms dates back to so-called pesos, which he developed in the late 1980s. The word ‘pesos’ means ‘weight’ in English. To make these sculptures, Neto filled women’s nylons with lead pellets. The sculptural form was achieved when he let the nylons hang to the floor and the lead pellets filled out the thin, stretchy material. Neto attributed symbolic qualities to the lead and the transparent material – he interpreted the sculptures as fertility symbols.

The symbolic meaning of materials is also central to the work you see here. It is tempting to relate the beans and colourful plastic netting to art-historical precursors from Modernism or Art Povera. The concept of Art Povera, meaning ‘poor art’, designates a group of Italian modernists active in the late 1960s. They used simple, mundane materials to create artworks. Like his modernist precursors, Neto uses commonplace materials. The readymade plastic netting is found in numerous contexts, and beans are important ingredients in traditional Brazilian cooking. Thus Neto’s choice of materials can also take on political connotations. We find references to Brazilian history, not least to European involvement in the country. Concepts like Colonialism, trade relations and exotic goods also enter our minds. In this way the artwork becomes laden with political associations and gains meaning over and above its visual qualities and the unmistakable sculptural character.