NYAB Event - Fernando Mastrangelo “Nothing”

Fernando Mastrangelo “Nothing”

Mike Weiss Gallery

This event has ended.

Mike Weiss Gallery presents Fernando Mastrangelo’s first solo show in New York: NOTHING. Strategically using materials for their aesthetic and historical senses and for their power to signify, the works in NOTHING ignore any bias regarding criss-crossing design and fine art as well as commodity and aesthetic functions. Taking cues from as far back as antiquity, NOTHING uses pure form and symbolic meaning to transform commodity goods into sculptures and wall-hanging pieces referencing art and social histories and the seductive ideas of sacred geometry. The title of the exhibition references Jean-Paul Sartre’s canonical existential work Being and Nothingness (1943).

The most identifying element of Mastrangelo’s work is dyed salt. Historically, salt was highly valued and used as a form of trade or currency, while in many religions salt is also a symbol of purity, often placed on altars for worship. In NOTHING, salt is dyed soft hues of color then meticulously set. The wall-hanging works become crystalline, glimmering paintings with each salt rock forming a dynamic brushstroke. The wall-hanging pieces also spoof the romantic notion of the sublime by exuding grandeur inspiring wonder while in direct contrast to the democratized goods, neutralizing the effect and connecting the viewer with familiar substances.

The sculptures in NOTHING are informed by the ancient idea of sacred geometry, or the belief that Pythagorean geometry and the laws of the universe work together and can be harnessed to aid spiritual transcendence. Used in Greco-Roman architecture, Medieval European cathedrals, and in Indian and Himalayan communities, these simple shapes, each considered to be perfect and carry emotional weight, are adapted to form sculptures made of cement poured in intentional bands. The resulting surface qualities effectively trick the eye into rethinking the self-referential connotations of the material, then dyed salt is affixed to the surface as if an alchemical alteration took place fusing the two materials into one coherent statement.

The materials used in NOTHING allude to the endless possibilities of transformation in the common, everyday goods we have around us, providing hope for the possibility of aesthetic utility in what we overlook as banal. Each piece in NOTHING is informed by conscious choices that start with the artist’s triangular thought process of finding content, seeking form, then materializing the result to fulfill each point of the triangle.

Fernando Mastrangelo has exhibited throughout the US and internationally. In 2008 the Brooklyn Museum acquired his work, then included it in the critically-acclaimed exhibition Connecting Cultures in 2012. His work has been featured in publications such as Architectural Digest, Wall Street Journal, Flaunt Magazine, Cultured, and Miami Herald among many others. Additionally, Mastrangelo is co-founder of a design firm, AMMA Studio, which operates out of his Brooklyn studio.