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TOMÁS SARACENO: PARTICULAR MATTER(S) / SILENT AUTUMN

Spiders and their webs are at the center of Tomás Saraceno’s immersive, multimedia exhibitions at the Shed and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

TOMÁS SARACENO: PARTICULAR MATTER(S)
The Shed
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 17
Upper level + gallery: $42; lower level + gallery: $35; gallery exhibition only: $12
646-455-3494
theshed.org
studiotomassaraceno.org

The integration of art, technology, nature, and the environment is central to Argentina-born artist Tomás Saraceno’s discipline, currently on display in a pair of complex immersive exhibitions in the city. In “Silent Autumn” at Tanya Bonakdar in Chelsea and “Particular Matter(s)” at the Shed in Hudson Yards, Saraceno investigates toxic air and water, the reuse of plastic bags, rampant consumerism, and, most of all, spiders though collaborations with MIT and NASA, among others, attempting to find ways to fix a broken planet in this out-of-control Capitalocene era.

In a 2014 lecture he gave at MIT, Saraceno discussed the “sociability” of spiders. “It’s very similar to humans,” he said. “Spiders are social because they have enough space and food. But if you put a lot of social spiders in a very tiny space, they are not social. They eat each other. They’re pretty much like humans. There are forty-three thousand species of spider and only twenty are social. Knowing that sociability is a big trend for the survival of the planet, no one really understands this. What we do is try to make [the spiders] operate and work, one with the other, the solitary and the social.” It sounds all too close as humanity emerges from a global pandemic.

Continuing through April 17, “Particular Matter(s)” leads visitors on an audiovisual journey through the kingdom of the spiders. Webs of At-tent(s)ion consists of seven encased hybrid spider webs, hanging in midair and lit so it appears that they’re glowing in the dark. Each case is like its own universe, with different species of spider building on what others started, resulting in magical architectural structures made of spider silk and carbon fibers.

Radio Galena turns a crystal into a wireless radio receptor. Printed Matter(s) reproduces cosmic dust from 1982 in a series of ten photos printed using black carbon PM2.5 pollution extracted from the air in Mumbai; they are arranged loosely on a wall, as if they might blow away and break up into shreds, like the atmosphere being destroyed by pollution. Particular Matter(s) is a light beam that reveals how much dust is in the air that we breathe, poisoned by the burning of fossil fuels.

Arachnomancy features a deck of thirty-three tarot-like meteorological “oracle” cards, printed on carbon-footprint-neutral paper, spread out across a table, based on the beliefs of the spider diviners of Somié, Cameroon, who make cards out of leaves, forecasting weather events. The cards include images of maps, plants, human figures, and webs, with such titles as “Bad News,” “Planetary Drift,” “Invertebrate Rights,” “Entanglement,” and “Fortunate Webbing.” Dangling above the table is a web built by two Cyrtophora citricola spiders that looks like you could rip it apart with a soft breath.

Inspired by the writings of science journalist Harriet A. Washington, We Do Not All Breathe the Same Air uses black carbon, soot, and PM2.5 and PM10 to reveal how pollution impacts air quality in different parts of the country, adversely affecting BIPOC and poorer areas. A red sliding sheet laser brings spider webs to life in a long horizontal window in How to entangle the universe in a spider/web,? which resembles a trip through the human circulatory system or into a far-off galaxy. The concept of spider ballooning and visitors’ movement combine to create music in Sounding the Air, an installation in which five threads of spider silk form an aeolian instrument that emits sonic frequencies when it encounters heat, wind, body movement, and other elements.

A Thermodynamic Imaginary is a room filled with many wonders of Saraceno’s oeuvre, a fantasy world comprising sculpture, projected video (Tata Inti and Living at the bottom of the ocean of air), shadows, reflections, large bubbles, and more, like its own galaxy in what the artist calls the Aerocene: “a stateless state, both tethered and free floating; a community, an open source initiative; a name for change, and an era to live and breathe in.”

On the fourth floor, you have to remove your shoes to walk into Museo Aero Solar, devised by Saraceno and Alberto Pesavento in 2007, an ecological balloon composed of plastic bags sewn together, their brands and trademarks visible, seeking to eventually eliminate the use of fossil fuels by providing sustainable, free-floating options. The gallery also includes documentation of the project and such items as an Aerocene Backpack and flight starter kits.

The centerpiece of “Particular Matter(s)” is Free the Air: How to hear the universe in a spider/web, a live eight-minute concert held in an almost blindingly white two-level, ninety-five-foot diameter floating sculpture, commissioned by the Shed for this exhibition. The limited audience gets misted as they enter the foggy space, which contains 450,000 cubic feet of air and features a large-scale net made of steel and thick wire that evokes a giant spider web on which people lie down; it’s a rather tenuous trampoline with gaps in it, so if you jump, it will affect not only your balance but others’ as well, so don’t play around too much. If you’re on the lower level, you can look up to see the people above you, almost walking on air.

Darkness ensues and the concert in four movements begins, prerecorded sound waves and vibrations of spiders interacting with their webs that are impacted by the audience’s presence, incorporating Sounding the Air, Webs of At-tent(s)ion, and other items in “Particular Matter(s).” It’s a welcoming atmosphere of interspecies communion and coexistence that plots a course for ways to save our increasingly fragile planet using our innate spider-sense and expanding our idea of what home is.

Advance tickets are necessary for the special experience and sell out quickly, so act fast. As part of the Shed program “Matter(s) for Conversation and Action,” on March 30 at 6:00 there will be a free Zoom panel discussion, “Invention, Experimentation, and Radical Imagination,” with MIT professor Caroline A. Jones, climate scientist Dr. Kate Marvel, and Vassar professor Molly Nesbit, moderated by designer, teacher, and entrepreneur Sandra Goldmark, followed on April 13 at noon by “Rights of Nature, Activism, and Change” with lawyer Alicia Chalabe, Dartmouth professor N. Bruce Duthu, and sociologist and writer Maristella Svampa, moderated by Columbia Law School professor Michael B. Gerrard.

Tomás Saraceno gallery show at Tanya Bonakdar complements Shed exhibition (photo courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery)

TOMÁS SARACENO: SILENT AUTUMN
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through March 26, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

In conjunction with the Shed show, Tanya Bonakdar is presenting “Silent Autumn” through March 26. The title plays off Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 book, Silent Spring, a “fable for tomorrow” that called for the elimination of such chemicals as DDT in order to maintain a living, breathing Earth. The exhibit begins with An Open Letter for Invertebrate Rights, in which Spider/Webs explain, “Do not be afraid. Let us move from arachnophobia to arachnophilia by sensing new threads of connectivity, or else face the eternal silence of extinction.”

Visitors must put booties over their shoes in order to enter Algo-r(h)i(y)thms, a musical instrument comprising a vast network of webs, the strings of which make warming sounds when plucked. You can either create your own solo or work in tandem with others for a more ornate score. Surrounding the instrument are Arachne’s handwoven Spider/Web Map of Andrómeda, with a duet of Nephila inaurata — four weeks and ensemble of Cyrtophora citricola — three weeks and Cosmic Filaments, intricate black-and-white architectural drawings of web universes.

The title diptychs (and one triptych) pair framed leaves glued to inkjet paper next to framed photographs of the leaves; the two works initially look identical, but over time the real leaves will fade and disintegrate while the picture endures. Silent Spring comprises four panels of pressed poppy flowers from contaminated soil near Saraceno’s Berlin-Rummelsburg studio, with shutters that protect them from the sun, although they too will fade; the dirt was polluted by a photographic film and dye manufacturer, so the piece is very much part of Saraceno’s personalized mission of recycling and sustainability.

In the same room, three stainless-steel and wood sculptures hang from the ceiling at different heights, evoking the much larger structures Saraceno installed on the Met roof for “Cloud City” in 2012 as well as the Silent Autumn framed leaves. In a smaller room, the blown glass pieces Pneuma, Aeolus, Aeroscale, and Aerosolar Serpens probe breathing, physical presence, and the brittleness of existence. Other works continue Saraceno’s exploration of overconsumption, pollution, climate change, and the future of life on the planet — and throughout the universe.

Saraceno is a genius at bringing us into his world by creating fascinating objects that are ravishing to look at, then hitting us with the heavily researched science behind it all as he attempts to save the world. But he can only do it with our help.

WONG PING: YOUR SILENT NEIGHBOR / THE GREAT TANTALIZER

“Wong Ping: Your Silent Neighbor” continues at the New Museum through October 3 (photo by Dario Lasagni)

WONG PING: YOUR SILENT NEIGHBOR
New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 3, $12-$18
www.newmuseum.org

WONG PING: THE GREAT TANTALIZER
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through October 23, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

Multimedia artist Wong Ping’s current shows at the New Museum in SoHo and Tanya Bonakdar in Chelsea are filled with lovable animated pandas, colorful cartoons, a retelling of Pinocchio, and playful sculpture and installation. But you might want to think twice before bringing the kids, as Wong’s work tackles income inequality, sexual repression and expression, police corruption, dating and desire, climate change, and sociopolitical aspects of contemporary life, particularly in his native Hong Kong as its battles with Mainland China since the 1997 handover from the British grow ever-more dangerous, all told in a DIY style inspired by video games and narrated by Wong himself.

At the New Museum, An Emo Nose (2015) reimagines Pinocchio’s proboscis, resembling both a heart and a penis, as its own sentient being, reacting to the protagonist’s negative thoughts by stretching out and going off on its own, depicting humanity’s vulnerability of both mind and body. In the two-channel The Other Side (2015), projected onto a screen and a small television monitor in front of it, the narrator journeys across treacherous terrain, has soup with Granny Meng (forgetfulness goddess Meng Po), and ponders his future, a parable of emigration from Hong Kong filtered through the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. A 3-D printed text panel relates self-affirmations in tiny letters, including “I am the last drop of period blood before menopause” and “I am the last rebellious punk.”

The retrospective is centered by four videos projected onto four screens on all sides of one large room; visitors sit on comfy beanbag chairs or a round couch as they rotate to watch the short films, which total forty-three minutes. In Jungle of Desire (2015), an impotent man is powerless when his wife becomes a prostitute to satisfy her sexual desire and is exploited by a cop. In Who’s the Daddy? (2017), a man considers himself an outcast because his penis is straight, not bending to the left or right, and confuses politics and sex as things go wrong with a woman he hooked up with on a dating app. “People even deny its existence,” he opines about his member.

Wong Ping’s Fables 2 (2019) follows the trials and tribulations of a special cow and three conjoined rabbit siblings attempting to make their own way in life. And in Sorry for the Late Reply (2021), commissioned for this show, a fisherman becomes obsessed with an elderly saleswoman’s varicose veins. “If you’ve ever stepped into the supernatural world during a hike, or have gotten lost in the parking lot and couldn’t find the exit, or have stared into the eyes of a black chicken standing outside your door through the peephole late at night, then you would know how I feel,” he says.

Wong Ping is a curator researching the Great Tantalizer in show at Tanya Bonakdar

Over at Tanya Bonakdar, Wong’s “The Great Tantalizer” is a multimedia installation structured around a mockumentary about a scientist who had been determined to increase sexual desire in pandas and bring that information on their mating techniques to humans, particularly in China, given its former one-child policy and overall preference for boys. The relentless drive to tantalize may be commenting as well on the current tangping movement, or “lying flat,” in which many younger Chinese have opted out of the pressures of modern life by declining to engage in the endless competition for personal and professional success, a high-quality education, a good job, a happy marriage, a beautiful home, and lovely children.

The gallery has been reimagined as the Great Tantalizer’s abandoned laboratory, with a stack of white plastic chairs and a labcoat, an exhibition poster and bamboo pole that declare, “EAT.SLEEP.POOOOOP.DIE,” and The Tender Rider, a cute old kiddie vehicle with a panda head that now serves as a projector, beaming highly sexualized images onto the walls in a back room. It’s all organized around a screen showing a Zoom-like panel discussion featuring Wong in a panda outfit, hosting the virtual talk with the GT’s former laboratory staff, one-night stand, and main competitor, whose identities are disguised. Visitors can sit on rolls of bound bamboo sticks as Wong explores who the GT was and what his legacy is.

The thirty-seven-year-old Wong is quickly building up an impressive legacy of his own with these presentations at the New Museum and Tanya Bonakdar, expanding his breadth with his distinctive approach to exposing society’s ills.

SARA SZE

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Sarah Sze’s Crescent (Timekeeper) immerses visitors at Tanya Bonakdar (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through October 19, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-414-4144
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com
www.sarahsze.com
sarah sze slideshow

Sarah Sze has long been creating intricate, fragile ecosystems that feel like a complex construction made of giant toothpicks (and just about anything else she can find) that could come tumbling down with a mere touch. These installations have grown more detailed over time, incorporating high-tech electronic elements while expanding the breadth of its range. Her latest immersive exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar in Chelsea begins outside the gallery and continues in the hallways, large main space, back room, and upstairs, on the walls and the floors and the ceilings. There’s something everywhere, transforming parts of the gallery into her studio, revealing her extraordinary process. Originally a painter who now considers herself a sculptor, the Boston-born, New York-based artist centers the show with Crescent (Timekeeper), an exquisite work consisting of dozens of objects, from ladders, boxes, and rocks to plants, lamps, and bottles. Videos are projected onto torn pieces of paper, including a flying eagle, prowling wolves, the swirling ocean, and a burning fire, enhanced by sound as well, each open in its own internet browser, leaving it up to the viewer to make a narrative.

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Sarah Sze reveals some of her methodology in Tanya Bonakdar back room (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

There are no barriers to prevent you from getting too close to the delicate piece; there’s a guard situated on the other side of the room, but Sze trusts us to not wreak havoc. She also shows us what she’s doing; the hallway is filled with her notes, some of the materials she uses (tape, paint, push pins, photographs, videos), while behind Crescent (Timekeeper) is a stack of slowly turning projectors, casting light and shadows everywhere. The back room is a cluttered studio setting with boxes, painted canvases with images stuck on, water bottles, paper towels, and other general detritus — the process has become the work.

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

A studio space offers viewers a look at Sarah Sze’s creative process (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Upstairs is a room of four gorgeous painting collages, streaks of white paint on the floor forming a half-moon around one, as if beaming in through the skylight. Be sure to get close to the works to experience their startling depth. In the smaller, dark room, Sze lays bare her process of projecting tiny images onto a wall, revealing how she first designs them on a computer, then projects them through a sculptural form and onto the far wall. It’s utterly ingenious and wholly captivating.

Sze’s works are particularly suited to our image-saturated urban life, and especially here in New York City: Her Triple Point (Pendulum) is part of MoMA’s “Surrounds: 11 Installations” exhibition opening next week, her Blueprint for a Landscape can be seen all over the 96th St. stop on the Second Ave. subway, and her birdhouse Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat) was on the High Line in 2012. And in 2006, her partially submersive Corner Plot welcomed people to the Scholars’ Gate entrance to Central Park.

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Paint forms a kind of floor sculpture in Sarah Sze show in Chelsea (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In her 2018 essay “The Tattered Ruins of the Map: On Sarah Sze’s Centrifuge,” Sze’s friend, award-winning writer Zadie Smith, writes, “Like so much of Sarah Sze’s work, Centrifuge is a complex constellation of elements, in which all constituents present themselves simultaneously. . . . After the rupture, after the apocalypse, amid the ruin of cables and wires, someone might ask: what was the purpose of all of those images within and through which we lived?” This is true of her current Chelsea show, as Sze merges disparate components and artistic disciplines, both analog and digital, to forge a deep dive into the nature of time, space, and memory in a chaotic age.

TOMÁS SARACENO: SOLAR RHYTHMS

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Shadows and reflections emanate from Tomás Saraceno’s “Aerocene Constellation 3/2” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through June 9, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-414-4144
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com
tomassaraceno.com

Argentina-born artist Tomás Saraceno — who “lives and works in and beyond the planet Earth” — creates ultracool installations that dazzle the senses and the mind — like his 2012 Met roof installation, Cloud City. But there are multiple dimensions of space and time to his work, as his sixth solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar, “Tomás Saraceno: Solar Rhythms,” demonstrates, immersing visitors into his unique view of the future of the universe. Although Saraceno is not a scientist, he has had residencies at the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology and the French National Space Agency, resulting in his creation of environmentally sensitive pieces generated purely by sun and wind, with no need of fossil fuels, solar panels, or batteries. As he explains, “While enterprises to colonize other planets are put in place, this very same interface between us and the Sun and the atmosphere continues to be compromised: Carbon emissions fill the air, invisible radio waves develop in a hegemonic algorithm of finance, particulate matter floats inside our lungs. How would breathing feel in a post fossil fuel economy, and what is our response-ability?”

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tomás Saraceno’s “Calder Upside Down 35/20/18/12/8/6” was inspired by Alexander Calder mobiles (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The centerpiece of the exhibit is “Aerocene Constellation 3/2,” a pair of large-scale inflatable orbs both reflective and transparent. Saraceno has declared that the current Anthropocene age will be followed by the Aerocene epoch, “one of atmospherical and ecological consciousness, where we together learn how to float and live in the air, and to achieve an ethical collaboration with the environment.” Several hanging sculptures — “Calder Upside Down 35/20/18/12/10/8/6,” “Aerosolar Lyra,” “Solar Eclipse” — surround the two inflatables, with lighting that extends the works through shadows and reflections on the walls, floor, and other pieces. Don’t miss the back room; the doorway is pitch black, so many people don’t realize they can enter and encounter “Sounding the Air,” an immersive sound and light project involving spider silk as a form of travel. (Do not walk in front of the stand with the small purple lights, as repeated sound emissions could damage the work.) Also downstairs are the Aerocene Float Predictor, an app that plots out Aerocene travel through wind and weather patterns, and the Aerocene Explorer, a floating kit for individual use.

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Tomás Saraceno: Solar Rhythms” consists of numerous works that combine art and science for a sustainable future (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The exhibition continues upstairs with a pair of short documentary films, Frederik Jacobi’s Aerocene and Diving into the Ocean of Air, which show some of Saraceno’s projects in action, floating above White Sands, New Mexico, and the Salinas Grandes salt lake in Jujuy, Argentina, respectively. In another room is a collection of fab objects, including hand-blown glass inspired by the Weaire-Phelan structure, filled with human breath and resembling soap bubbles that mimic constellations, and “RAY 1080,” which references the speed of light. Thus, every work in the exhibition incorporates some aspect of sustainability and our relationship with the environment, one that needs help, and fast. And Saraceno here presents some fascinating ways forward.

OLAFUR ELIASSON: THE LISTENING DIMENSION

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Olafur Eliasson, “Rainbow bridge,” twelve partially painted and silvered glass spheres, steel, paint, 2017 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through April 22, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-414-4144
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com
listening dimension slideshow

In describing “The listening dimension (orbit 1, orbit 2, and orbit 3),” part of Olafur Eliasson’s first solo show in New York in five years, continuing at Tanya Bonakdar through April 22, the press release explains that “the installation reinforces Eliasson’s insistence on actively engaging the viewer in the artwork.” Unfortunately, on a recent Saturday afternoon, that engagement became far too active, as a visitor to the gallery, mesmerized by the illusion created by the three-part work, poked at it, leaving a pretty serious mark that affected the power of the piece. For more than twenty years, Eliasson, who was born in Copenhagen, raised in Iceland and Denmark, and lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin, has been creating mind-blowing works using various combinations of glass, refracted light, mirrors, and metal. “The listening dimension (orbit 1, orbit 2, and orbit 3)” consists of three large, rectangular sheets of silver Mylar from which emerge semicircles of tubes that jut out like rings around Saturn; the arcs are completed in the reflection, making them appear as full circles. Placed on three sides of the room, the work immerses the viewer into a series of repeated, neverending reflections that shimmer far off into the distance. “The listening dimension emerged against the backdrop of the 2016 US elections,” Eliasson says about the installation. “At a time when oversimplification is everywhere, I believe that art can play an important role in creating aesthetic experiences that are both open and complex. Today, in politics, we are bombarded with emotional appeals, often linked to simplistic, polarizing, populist ideas. The arts and culture, on the other hand, provide spaces in which people can disagree and still be together, where they can share individual and collective experiences that are ambiguous and negotiable. At its best, art is an exercise in democracy; it trains our critical capacities for perceiving and interpreting the world. Yet art does not tell us what to do or how to feel, but rather empowers us to find out for ourselves.” (That is true, except when it involves touching something that signs clearly say not to touch.)

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Olafur Eliasson’s “The listening dimension (orbit 1, orbit 2, and orbit 3)” creates a striking illusion at Tanya Bonakdar (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Eliasson also melds art and science with “Rainbow bridge,” a row of a dozen globes on stands that seem to change color as you walk past them; depending on your angle of perception, they appear as all black, all silver, all clear, or organized in the colors of the rainbow, from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to indigo to violet. The globes also function as lenses, inverting the reflection of the person on the other side, distorting reality in humorous ways. Once again, do not touch.

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Space resonates regardless of our presence” offers visitors a chance to reflect on their place in the universe (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Eliasson continues his exploration of light and color, gravity and orientation, natural and technological phenomenon upstairs, where a driftwood compass called “Rouge navigator” leads you to “Midnight sun,” a slightly concave mirror behind which a monofrequency lamp casts a glow that makes it appear that the disc is surrounded by a beautiful, fiery halo. Off in a room by itself, “Colour experiment no. 78” is a grid of seventy-two circular paintings that change color when you turn a light on or off. (This is the only thing in the exhibition that you are actually supposed to touch in order to activate the experience.) The exhibition concludes with “Space resonates regardless of our presence,” a trio of ghostly wall projections made by sending pinpoints of light through a glass lens; the resultant images include multiple colors and an intensely pleasing circularity. In 2008, Eliasson dazzled New York with the wide-ranging “Take Your Time” dual exhibition at MoMA and PS1 as well as “The New York City Waterfalls,” set up along the East River. You should certainly take your time when experiencing “The listening dimension,” which offers visitors a chance to reflect on their place in the universe. Just keep your hands to yourself.

ERNESTO NETO: THE SERPENT’S ENERGY GAVE BIRTH TO HUMANITY

Ernesto Neto’s “The Serpent’s Energy Gave Birth to Humanity” welcomes visitors into its soothing passageways (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Ernesto Neto’s “The Serpent’s Energy Gave Birth to Humanity” welcomes visitors into its soothing passageways (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through December 16, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-414-4144
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

For his first gallery exhibition in four years, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto has created another happy-making installation grounded in ritual, tradition, and custom. Inspired by his recent collaborations with the indigenous, shamanistic Huni Kuin (Kaxinawá) of South America, “The Serpent’s Energy Gave Birth to Humanity” contains several living sculptures that welcome visitors into their inviting warmth. Neto’s trademark hand-dyed, crocheted work can be found throughout the two floors of Chelsea’s Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, dangling from the ceiling, hanging on the walls, and spread across the floor. The centerpiece is “Adam Boa Eve Apple Egg,” a large-scale, snakelike passage that leads to a communal womblike area where people can relax, lie down, play a bongo or guitar, and even put on a hat. “The spirit of the boa is an energy . . . It’s a vibration that is inside all the matter, and in all life,” Neto says of the work. That positivity, and Neto’s belief in humanity’s connectivity with nature, is evident in the titles of several of the wall pieces, including “Cosmic roots of the earth,” “Sprouting life,” “Life is love, love energy, from dark earth to light sky D L D L D L,” and, simply, “Joy.” Upstairs, visitors are greeted by a twisting helix ladder titled “e twin serpents, the stairway to life a”; in a small room, you can get comfy on “I am, yo soy, mantra light,” which evokes an umbrella at a beach resort. And in the bigger upstairs room, you can breathe in “Flying fern, cater-boa-pillar, cleaning air, cleaning earth,” a collection of potted plants and stones hanging from the ceiling, and and then stick your arm deep in the far wall piece for a special surprise. With “The Serpent’s Energy Gave Birth to Humanity,” Neto — who dazzled crowds with his giant, immersive “Anthropodino” at the Park Ave. Armory in 2009 — once again melds mind and body, earth and spirit in an energetic treat for the senses.