Forum 57

The subjective experience of space—both architectural and physiological—brings together the photographs of Luisa Lambri and the sculptures of Ernesto Neto. Lambri’s luminous, minimalist images reveal the interiors of well-known modern and contemporary architectural structures, recording subtle differences in light, shadow, and perceived space. Her images do not document structures in the traditional photographic sense but rather interact with them as an interpretive, visual embodiment of her own experience of space. This exhibition includes her photographs of the interior of architect Luis Barragán’s home in Mexico City.

Neto explores the corporeal, sensual, and tactile possibilities of sculpture through translucent fabric forms that often are anchored by bundles of aromatic herbs and spices. Entering one of Neto’s environments is similar to walking into the interior of a body in a science fiction fantasy. Unlike more traditional sculpture, Okitimanaia Ogu (2000) is suspended from the ceiling, and the viewer walks beneath the work, which is both an amoeba-like entity and a kind of otherworldly architecture. This collapse of the distinction between architecture and biology lies at the heart of the artist’s work and has led him to describe his practice as a hybrid “body/space/landscape.”

At the juncture between the rational world and the world of dreams, Lambri and Neto embark on their own personal yet complementary explorations of the poetic dimensions of space.