Artist and designer Fernando Mastrangelo’s practice has always been responsive to the sociopolitical landscape. Rising sea levels and melting glaciers, for example, were the visual impetus for a series of rugs with oozing motifs a decade ago. More recently, he was inspired by Greenland, after the US government announced its intention to take over the country. 'I’ve always made work about landscapes in different ways,' Mastrangelo, who is based in New York's Hudson Valley, tells Wallpaper.*
The designer wanted his next body of work to interrogate what makes a territory contested, and, by extension, makes it become an embodiment of human greed. The result is now on view at New York's Cristina Grajales Gallery as part of a new exhibition called Territories. The show features furniture pieces and paintings with images of lands currently affected by political tension. Mastrangelo overlays tables, tubular lamps and mirrored paintings with lush panoramas of the natural world, a move that asks viewers to contemplate the emotional and natural character of socially turbulent land. Both utopian and immediate, the landscapes in the artist’s handling appear disarmingly beautiful and beg for closer inspection. Besides their invitation to discuss why these lands are subject to invasion, the works hint at an intricate production process.
Mastrangelo in his studio in Upstate New York.
Mastrangelo pulls imagery from broad sources, including Shutterstock, Pinterest and and Google search. He then designs a three-dimensional rendering of the subject, whether a horizon or a mountaintop. The furniture pieces, such as a duo of side tables and a large dinner table, are created using Formica wood moulds. Mastrangelo fills these forms with hand-dyed sand and powdered glass to echo the 3D source imagery. 'I drizzle sand into the mould little by little through a half-inch sliver,' he explains. 'I can’t really see what I am actually creating.'
A stick helps him pack his effervescent material tightly into the mould which then gets removed to reveal arresting harmonies of colour, texture and depth.
Mastrangelo pays particular attention to the pieces’ legs to convey visual continuity and sculptural volume. He also notes a 'self-referential' approach in the show which marks a return to production after a brief professional break following a decade of intense output. Besides sand’s textural similarity to his previous favorite material, salt, the legs’ cylinder silhouettes pay tribute to his widely-celebrated drum-shaped side tables which he debuted in 2016.
The paintings, some of which feature mirrored surfaces, result from a flat technique in which Mastrangelo constantly pours sand and glass into a mould while keeping an eye on the digital rendering. The images vary in colour spectrum and political tension, including a mountainous landscape in Kashmir or a sunset colouring the snow tops of The Golan Heights in Syria.
A standout is a towering two-door cabinet blanketed by the view of a fiery dusk in Nagorno-Karabakh, a contested mountainous region in Azerbaijan. Mastrangelo embarked on creating his first wardrobe upon Grajales’s suggestion to push his process to a grander scale. Dressing the furniture’s white oak base entirely with sand and glass, the artist alchemises craftsmanship with a painterly visual command and delivers a poetic idea of function.
Mastrangelo hopes his way of storytelling through furniture and art resonates with their end-user. 'It would be my ideal that people absorb the work and carry on the stories of these places to others who interact with the pieces,' he says.
Fernando Mastrangelo: Territories is open at Cristina Grajales Gallery through 12, February 2027