“Ingarden’s work portrays a hybrid object: a bed, a musical instrument, and a coffin—one single object in the form of a combination of the three while one dissolves into the other. Its material-linguistic structure transforms these commonplace objects into a palimpsest of dislocated significance. The final object is shiny gold, supported by long metallic legs on wheels, and within it are layered parts of the human spine cast in bronze, copies of an anatomical model attached with strings to the walls of the hybrid; the spine has a performative aspect, able to produce a certain musicality. The general character of Ingarden’s work is well described by curator Attilia Fattori Franchini as “a journey into materialism, fiction and science fiction, and the domestic, unraveling the evocative power of places, objects, and interior design.” Sleeping Beauty Corp. seems to align with this description while entering into a dialogue with Fowles’ The Magus. The school building and its mirrored history as the setting of the novel has a corresponding significance to the piece per se. The protagonist of Fowles’ novel, Nicholas Urfe—who worked as an English teacher on this Greek island (renamed Fraxos in the novel)—struggles with loneliness and depression and loses the ability to distinguish reality from fiction; his mind is tricked by illusions and nightmares. We could read Ingarden’s work as an immediate crystallization of the imaginary world of the protagonist’s state of mind. Reality “distorted while remembering itself” is seen here as a compound removal from the world. The venue itself becomes as much a protagonist in the show as the sculpture; the reference to it is a recognizable return to the phantasmal setting of the novel. But the building also remains the material place inspiring both the novel and the sculpture. Ingarden’s “bed/instrument/ coffin” reflect the essence and narrative potential of the space of the school with its history reverberating in the architecture itself.”

– Elina Axioti