Flashbacks – 4. The Ladies’ Room

BUILDINGBOX presents, from April 9, 2022 to January 7, 2023, Flashbacks, an exhibition curated by Alice Montanini that retraces the most important stages of BUILDING’s artistic research and promotion, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of its birth.
Flashbacks pays tribute to all the artists, curators and essayists who have contributed to shaping BUILDING’s core, presenting for the first time in an organic way a selection of works from the gallery’s permanent collection, accompanied by the catalogues and archive materials that document its curatorial practice over the last five years.
Central to Flashbacks‘ investigation is the moment of the exhibition, here conceived as a medium, mirroring the relationships and dynamics generated between the work, the artist and the gallery space, which flow into the more complex sphere of that system of critical and aesthetic categories that are at the basis of BUILDING’s curatorial approach and programming.
An important focus of Flashbacks is also the catalogues published by BUILDING to accompany each exhibition. BUILDING’s strong focus on study and research, not only as a hub for the promotion of contemporary art but also as a publishing house, is evinced by the careful selection of essayists and texts included in the various publications.
The exhibition will provide an opportunity to think back to the highlights of BUILDING’s curatorial activity, while also looking ahead to the future of its programming. To look back at the recent past with gratitude to all those who have accompanied BUILDING to date, but also with a critical eye, in order to outline new coordinates with which to question the present and better orientate ourselves towards the future.
An open-door reinterpretation of its collection, through some representative works by the main artists promoted by the gallery, and of the curatorial and publishing activity carried out so far, presented in the spaces of BUILDINGBOX at irregular intervals and visible 24/7 from the window of via Monte di Pietà 23 in Milan.

From June 4th to 17th, 2022 on the occasion of Milan Design Week, BUILDINGBOX is hosting an installation by The Ladies’ Room, a collective founded by Ilaria Bianchi, Agustina Bottoni, Astrid Luglio and Sara Ricciardi in 2016. With a multidisciplinary, experimental, collaborative approach, the artists explore the various dimensions and expressions of contemporary design.
The installation Corrente [Current] (2018) is a clever metamorphosis of different metals into refined, elegant botanical forms whose light, elongated shapes sway silently in the window space. Firmly anchored to bases in Carrara marble, these exotic leaves, upstretched on slender stalks, move when the air vibrates and respond to our passing.
BUILDING worked with The Ladies’ Room for the first time in 2018 on the occasion of the Salone del Mobile in Milan with the exhibition In itinere, which presented various site-specific works created for the gallery, and the following year with the project Mīror, presented at the Moshe Tabibnia Gallery.