Ernesto Neto Wins 2014 Aspen Award for Art

The award will be presented to the artist on Friday, August 1, 2014, during the museum’s 10th annual ArtCrush summer benefit gala and the night prior the official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the AAM’s highly anticipated, new 33,000-square-foot Shigeru Ban-designed facility in Aspen’s downtown core.

Neto’s Aspen Award for Art presentation comes during the exhibition of his two new site-specific installation works spanning the upper and lower galleries of the AAM’s current facility—the final exhibition scheduled within the current home of the non-collecting institution. The exhibition will be on view from June 6–September 2, 2014.

The AAM’s Aspen Award for Art is given each year to an artist who has made a significant contribution to the field of contemporary art. Past artist-honorees are: Teresita Fernández (2013), Tom Sachs (2012), Roni Horn (2011), Marilyn Minter (2010), Fred Tomaselli (2009), Ed Ruscha (2008), Jim Hodges (2007), Tony Feher (2006), and Richard Tuttle (2005).

Ernesto Saboia de Albuquerque Neto was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1964, where he currently lives and works. Neto has achieved international acclaim for his large-scale, immersive environments that alter and heighten our perceptions of our surroundings. Often involving stretchy, semitransparent fabric, aromatic spices, and, more recently, crochet, his installations have an organic, biomorphic character evoking skin and internal bodily systems that challenge the notion of sculpture as static object, and investigate the ways that alterations to space and environment transform relations between people. In engaging with this dialogue, Neto draws upon and extends both the abstract modernism of Alexander Calder, Hans Arp, and Constantin Brancusi, as well as the sensuous, performative practices of such Brazilian-artist predecessors as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica.

Since the mid-1990s, Neto has produced a widely exhibited and influential body of contemporary sculpture and installation. Recent exhibitions include The Insides Are on the Outside | O interior está no exterior, Casa de Vidro Lina Bo Bardi, São Paulo, Brazil, 2013 (group); Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates, 2013 (group); El Cuerpo que me me lleva | The Body that Carries Me, Guggenheim Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain, 2014 (solo); Cuddle on the Tightrope, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas, 2012 (solo); La lengua de ernesto: retrospectiva 1987-2011, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, MARCO, Mexico; traveling to Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City, Mexico, 2011-12 (solo); Ernesto Neto: O Bicho SusPensa na PaisaGen, Los Molinos Exhibition Hall, Faena Art District, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2011 (solo); Ernesto Neto: The Edges of the World, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London, UK, 2010 (solo); Ernesto Neto: Intimacy, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway, 2010 (solo), among many others.

On Friday, August 1, 2014, the Aspen Art Museum presents its annual summer benefit gala, hosting 400 of the world’s top art collectors, wine connoisseurs, artists, gallery owners, museum directors and curators, celebrities, and global business leaders for a three-day celebration. The 2013 ArtCrush summer benefit raised $2.1 million to fund the museum’s exhibition and educational programming.

The Aspen Art Museum is a non-collecting institution presenting the newest, most important evolutions in international contemporary art. Our innovative and timely exhibitions, education and public programs, immersive activities, and community happenings actively engage audiences in thought-provoking experiences of art, culture, and society.

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