Ingrid Donat: Ancestral

Carpenters Workshop Gallery New York presents Ancestral, a solo exhibition of Ingrid Donat, one of the most influential living artists in the decorative arts. The display showcases the artist’s skill for integrating sculptural practice into functional pieces of art influenced by living organisms and the natural world. Following previews in Paris and London, the expanded exhibition in New York is the culmination of a global exhibition tour that celebrates a practitioner known for imbuing bronze with warmth and vitality.

The display includes two new works as part of Ingrid Donat’s series of commodes. Marking a continuation of the artist’s long-term affinity with the commode, the pieces reflect the unique approaches to sculptural form that define the artist’s practice: these include the curves and rounded shapes that the artist found herself sculpting extensively while she was pregnant, as an artistic examination of the form and function of the female body.

One of Ingrid Donat’s recent masterpieces, Commode Ooni, first unveiled in Paris in April 2024, marks a triumphant return to the artist’s signature aesthetic of mark-making and scarification – a fascination that permeates her work, style, materials and process. The delicate, intricate pattern meticulously engraved into the surface is achieved through the process of wax casting, where the bronze is soldered and moulded with an exceptional level of precision and craft. Alongside a team of 15 artisans and a specialist foundry, Ingrid Donat worked piece-by-piece to form the commode’s complex and embellished framework.

Exhibited for the first time, another new work Commode Maya features a bronze exterior marked with an experimental, mechanical pattern that resembles animal- or insect-like forms inspired by the art of the ancient Mayans. The handles of the commode have been hand-moulded by the artist out of wax, leaving her personal, physical imprint on the work.

The unique pattern on the surfaces of both commodes is mirrored exactly in their leather interiors, creating a seamless continuity between outside and inside. The two works sit in dialogue with each other in terms of their anthropomorphic quality inspired by human, animal and natural form, but each with its own unique personality, motifs and inspirations.