Carpenters Workshop Gallery presents Crossing Over, the first LA-based solo exhibition of the Italian artist Vincenzo De Cotiis. Considered one of the pioneers of international contemporary collectible design, this body of work is a continuation of the artist’s investigation into urban environment imagery, where the city becomes a place of contamination and a culture of displacement. The distinct collection features new sculptural works of art that explore form and material through a palette of dark monochromes, organic compositions, and raw expression.
The works, offer a deep engagement with migration and cultural contamination, Crossing Over is an artistic exploration of contemporary urban aesthetics and the dynamic interplay of different cultures within urban spaces vocalized through anatomies that could be plucked from the Los Angeles environment or from the depths of an artist’s laboratory.
Although differing significantly from his recent collections Archaeology of Consciousness and Éternel, Crossing Over continues the artist’s signature expression of recycled surfaces. The recovery of materials is a fundamental part of the development of Crossing Over and becomes its primary creative act. Hand-painted recycled fibreglass, semi-precious stones and metals combine in a new assembly of processes and contribute to a new organicity.
Crossing Over resembles the work of an anthropologist who, through the study of cultures and traces, combines the differences and similarities within a given period. Inspired by Marc Augé’s “To be inside and outside, near and far” De Cotiis thinks of pure time as perpetual, absent from our world of images, simulacra, and reconstructed realities. Crossing Over becomes a nuanced tapestry, weaving together the intricate threads of temporal diversity and the timeless purity of existence.
