Rivane Neuenschwander

Through poetic and playful means, Rivane Neuenschwander’s work explores the blurred boundaries between the natural and constructed world. Quarta-Feira de Cinzas/Epilogue (2006), shown here in the exhibition Forum 60: Rivane Neuenschwander, is a short video depicting ants on a forest floor carrying sugar-soaked pieces of bright confetti in and around their colony. The work was made in collaboration with Brazilian filmmaker Cao Guimarães and is accompanied by an experimental soundtrack by the Brazilian music group O Grivo. Together the sound and visual components form a lyrical metaphor for the interaction between manmade and natural processes and behaviors.

Collaboration, chance, and the unpredictable results of natural organic processes form the core of Neuenschwander’s “ethereal materialism,” a phrase she uses to describe the generation of poetic experiences from ordinary events and materials in beautiful, subtle, and often ephemeral ways.

General support for the exhibition program at Carnegie Museum of Art is provided by grants from the Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Forum 60:
Rivane Neuenschwander
Forum Gallery