Ferdinando Castrangelo shades cement with MMATERIAL

All photos by Cary Whittier

New York 2016 – Brooklyn-based artist Fernando Mastrangelo created Fade, a minimal collection of cement furniture that is part of his MMATERIAL design project. The designs come in geometrically shaded pastel colours that invite people to feel by touch the warm look of a material that is generally seen as more industrial, neutral or even cold.

The Fade collection comprises a table with a coordinated side table and a set of drum-shaped cilindrical stools but also an arazzo-slab, all made in concrete. Ferdinando Mastrangelo brought together indoor and outdoor materials that fuse his minimalist aesthetic with deft ingenuity and craft.

“I would describe The Fade Series as an even more reductive approach to simple geometric works, separating it a bit from my previous collections” says Fernando Mastrangelo. “The pieces are strictly made with cement, which is a material I’ve been exploring for a while, but I really got a chance to push the subtly and beauty of what cement can do”.

Ferdinando Mastrangelo’s new collection debuted at Sight Unseen OFFSITE exhibition during New York Design Week, a.k.a. NYCxDesign. The designer casted the pieces from cement that was hand-dyed with pigments in various pastel shades.

The minimal table and side table stripes run along the legs and top while the arazzo-like concrete slab recalls a horizon with paltel hills. The drum-like stools remind the stratification of rocks. Indeed each coloured layer was poured on top on an other and then polished to obtain the final effect.

“Fade is about seductive surfaces that urge people to want to touch or interact with the material. The Fade Series is evolving into architectural spaces now, we are able to cast walls and complex objects, using the same principals, but expanding them into a physical experience” says Mastrangelo.

All photos by Cary Whittier.