Um dia todos fomos peixes by Ernesto Neto

The Blueproject Foundation presents "Um dia todos fomos peixes", the first solo exhibition of the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto in Barcelona. 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.

Um dia todos fomos peixes This unpublished work allows to discover the line of work that Ernesto Neto has been pursuing in the recent years and that can also be seen in the current Venice Biennale with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”.