Invoking portals and liminal boundaries between realms, Vincenzo De Cotiis unveils a new body of work that includes a series of contemporary archways. As symbols of architectural innovation since antiquity, arches stimulate memories of Roman ingenuity and Renaissance idealism, yet De Cotiis deconstructs their implied contexts and revaluates their vaulted forms in a new light.
Constructed from rare marble, recycled fiberglass, and Murano glass the arches are presented as timeless entities.
Stepping through one portal after another, the series is understood sequentially, creating a spatial and temporal passage through the exhibition. Their frames direct sight lines, using repeating imagery and forced perspectives to warp dimensions.
History, for Vincenzo De Cotiis, is only ever a starting point. In these artworks the artist takes a perfectly conceived structure, and unbalances, deforms, and reworks it in his own image, revolutionising the arch’s ancient and previously unchallenged connotations.
The exhibition is presented as a contemporary ruin, contaminated by nature but also by indiscriminate human behaviour. Representations that historically celebrate strength and triumph are transformed into amorphous archeological rejects, simultaneously iconic yet neglected.
Within ‘‘Archeology of Consciousness’’, Vincenzo De Cotiis searches the past for residues of sensitivity, unearthing gateways to previously unknown metaphysical spaces.
All images credited to photographer: Joachim Wichmann
