Unique
2025
Cast White Bronze, Hand-Painted Sculpted Murano Glass
Height — 18.5 in (47 cm)
Width — 53.1 in (135 cm)
Depth — 39.4 in (100cm)
Price — Upon Request
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Carpenters Workshop Gallery New York presents Je Marchais Pieds Nus Dans L’Étang, an immersive art installation by Vincenzo De Cotiis that explores the interplay between materiality, light, and nature. A collection of 50 unique works, this new solo exhibition is inspired by Claude Monet’s late water lily landscapes, in which vision dissolves into abstraction.
De Cotiis’ use of cast white bronze and hand-painted sculpted Murano glass lies at the heart of this exhibition. Creating a dialogue between depth and transparency, these materials capture the essence of water—its density, fluidity and fleeting reflections. Light refracts across surfaces, generating an interplay of opacity and translucency, echoing the ever-changing motion of a pond where creatures drift, dissolve and reappear.
The artist sees the water lily as a motif that is both serene and restless, appearing in distorted forms with surreal, skeletal stems. As they float, stretch and dissolve into their surroundings, these elusive creatures shift between abstraction and organic presence. With works that recall elongated, fluid legs wading through an imagined pond, the installation is anchored in movement and blurs the boundary between sculpture and environment.
With the opening of Je Marchais Pieds Nus Dans L’Étang in New York, De Cotiis continues his exploration of material transformation, creating an environment where sculpture, light and memory converge. The installation exists in a state of flux, where forms emerge and dissolve, shifting perception with each movement through space. A specially curated soundtrack complements the exhibition’s serene ambiance.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
VINCENZO DE COTIIS
A pioneer of contemporary collectible design, Vincenzo De Cotiis is known for merging art, architecture and design into a singular, sculptural language. Through manifestations that conflate archaic idioms with futuristic expressions, his evocative works embody a vision of design as poetic and non-replicable.
Born in 1958, De Cotiis lives and works in Milan, Italy. His career traces a winding path fuelled by parallelisms of space and time, with cultural layering and quantum leaps – a process that unfolds through material experimentation rather than reason and intellect.
De Cotiis’ practice is defined by an ongoing pursuit to reconcile ancient idioms with futuristic forms. Through an assembly of recovered materials and reflective, otherworldly surfaces, the artist transforms imperfection and patina into sources of beauty. His works hover between function and sculpture, evoking both timeworn relics and visions of future worlds. The Vincenzo de Cotiis Foundation in Venice hosts a programme of exhibitions, installations and publications dedicated to advancing the understanding and appreciation of contemporary art and design.
De Cotiis’ work has been exhibited at international institutions and museums including the Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City, Ca’ d’Oro in Venice, the Powerlong Art Museum in Shanghai, and FENIX Museum of Migration in Rotterdam, where his installation Ode entered the permanent collection in 2025, as well as at major international art and collectible design fairs.
In 2021, De Cotiis was awarded the Elle Deco International Design Award for Best Interior Designer of the Year. He has also featured for many years in Architectural Digest’s annual list of the world’s top 100 architects and designers. Vincenzo de Cotiis: Works by Anne Bony and Joseph Grima (Rizzoli, 2019) is an academic celebration of De Cotiis’ refined aesthetic, while Vincenzo De Cotiis: Interiors by Sarah Medford and Adrian Madlener (Rizzoli, 2023) is the first comprehensive book on interiors by the sought-after architect, collecting more than a decade of his atelier’s projects.