The works of Frank Martinangeli, engraver and sculptor, open doors to cities that do not exist yet belong to us. Imaginary metropolises, built with the rigor of engraved lines and the strength of metal, cities of cold and solemn architecture that stand like living organisms and force the viewer to confront the disorientation of the streets and squares we pass through every day, without experiencing them. They are landscapes of a disturbing familiarity, broken by non-places we cannot recognize, and thus they speak of our dwellings, of the escapes and absences of an urban life that shapes us without our being aware of it. The graphics, with their sharp perspectives, and the sculptures, engraved metals that light up, become silent and dazzling presences: mute bodies guarding a secret, witnesses to a degradation we like to think of only as outside ourselves, as if denying the city the osmosis that shapes us. Thus the fragile balance between urban landscape and interior landscape is revealed. The eye is lost among lines and reflections; the city, a restless organism, draws us into its metamorphoses, guiding us to reinvent our gaze, our identity, our memory, and then, slowly, in the silent tension of its forms, it comes to life. Each work becomes a mirror of this ongoing process, reflecting on our own precariousness: part of a large and powerful organism, yet no less fragile than our own identity.
Urban Metamorphosis is a journey into these suspended spaces, where the boundary between real and imaginary dissolves, and the city becomes a symbol of the human condition: fragile, changeable, disturbing, and at the same time—let's not forget—luminous.
Nicola Baldoni
