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In Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s New York Metropolis house, forged white bronze and painted by hand sculpted Murano glass come collectively in an set up that toes the road between the concrete and the mimetic. Aggressively natural and just a bit sci-fi, Vincenzo De Cotiis’s multi-piece spatial composition harkens again to Monet’s later landscapes, which grew to become more and more summary as cataracts took his sight. “Je Marchais Pieds Nus Dans L’Étang,” on view by February 13, is as immersive as a portray: a lily pond, reimagined by sculpture.
Initially previewed at Milan Design Week, the present arrived in New York late final yr absolutely realized—a cohesive, three-dimensional abstracted atmosphere composed of fifty distinctive works. Shifting by the present is, because the title (translated: “I Walked Barefoot within the Pond”) suggests, one thing like wading by an imagined marshy dreamscape filled with reflections and varieties that rise and shift with the altering of 1’s vantage level. There’s no fastened visible anchor right here, no narrative; a specifically curated ambient soundtrack deepens the spell, inviting the viewer to expertise the work at a meditative tempo.
De Cotiis has described the water lily as a motif that’s each “serene and stressed,” and his works embrace that duality. Skeletal stems stretch and float, and polished surfaces recall not simply the flower however one thing alien, creating an uncanny sense of rigidity between solidity and translucence, stillness and motion. The place Monet recorded abstracted worlds on canvas, De Cotiis does so in house.
It’s a delight to see design and artwork dissolve into one another this utterly. “His method to supplies usually feels otherworldly, creating reflective surfaces and reworking imperfection and patina into sources of magnificence,” Carpenters Workshop Gallery founders Julien Lombrail and Loïc Le Gaillard informed Observer after we caught up with them after the present’s opening to study extra about “Je Marchais Pieds Nus Dans L’Étang” and its genesis.
De Cotiis attracts inspiration from Monet’s late water lily landscapes, the place imaginative and prescient dissolves into abstraction; how does this exhibition prolong or rework that lineage for a up to date viewers?
Vincenzo De Cotiis has reimagined a timeless masterpiece for a contemporary age. Monet’s water scene turns into a sculptural panorama on this exhibition, an area by which objects crafted from glass and bronze recreate a fluid, immersive expertise of sunshine and nature. De Cotiis is subsequently embracing the evocative, transcendental nature of the water lilies whereas expressing it by a up to date sculptural language.
With 50 distinctive works assembled as a single cohesive atmosphere, the works come collectively like a panorama; how did you navigate the stress between particular person items and the collective set up?
“Je Marchais Pieds Nus Dans L’Étang” is introduced as a singular, cohesive set up; nevertheless, it consists of a large number of particular person artworks. Past what’s displayed within the exhibition itself, this physique of labor contains round 50 distinctive works in complete. For the exhibition, these sculptural components come collectively to contribute to the general expertise of the set up, evoking the feeling of wading barefoot by an imagined panorama. On the similar time, De Cotiis has designed each bit to hold particular person significance and identification. Which means that, whether or not taken individually or collectively, the works evoke highly effective concepts of materiality, gentle, abstraction and creativeness.
De Cotiis usually speaks about reminiscence, distortion and transformation in his apply; how do these concepts manifest most clearly for you on this explicit exhibition?
The exhibition is essentially about materials transformation. The sculptures seem as enigmatic creatures in distorted varieties; they’ve surreal, skeletal stems, very like the elongated, fluid legs of water lilies that transfer beneath the floor. As viewers navigate the set up, their notion of those objects shifts with motion and proximity. Anchored in movement, this dynamic spatial composition explores how reminiscence and notion will be distorted or remodeled.
The exhibition asks viewers to decelerate, discover refined shifts of sunshine and take up nuance; how does that form of sensory expertise resonate in New York, a metropolis outlined by velocity?
By means of natural varieties and shifting reflections, this set up is designed to evoke a contemplative sense of nature. De Cotiis captures the essence of water by using painted Murano glass and forged white bronze. Mild refracts throughout the surfaces of the sculptures, creating an interaction of opacity and translucency. That is notably vital inside the context of fast-paced city life, which dangers detaching us from the transformative energy of the pure world. By recreating the feeling of a pond, the place ethereal creatures drift, dissolve and reappear, the set up invitations viewers to decelerate and take into account the forces of nature that form our surroundings.
What do you suppose De Cotiis is contributing to present conversations round materiality and the way forward for sculptural apply?
He brings a particular sculptural language to modern discourse, one formed by parallelisms of house and time. He’s notably fascinated about how historical idioms can merge with futuristic varieties and expressions. His method to supplies usually feels otherworldly, creating reflective surfaces and reworking imperfection and patina into sources of magnificence. In a design panorama the place age-old supplies are continuously being reinvented, De Cotiis means that crafted objects can perform both as timeworn relics or as visions of future worlds.
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