Private Atlas, Chiara Dynys – Chapter I – 3/4

Chapter I – La disseminazione della memoria
January – April, 2025
BUILDING BOX

Texts by Alessandro Castiglioni

The first chapter of Private Atlas, by Chiara Dynys, presented in the exhibition spaces of BUILDING BOX, from Janunary to April, 2025, is titled La disseminazione delle memoria [The dissemination of memory] and explores a specific interest of the artist: her ability to create “sensitive spaces”.
What makes these spaces sensitive is their permeability – a relationship of continuity between internal and external elements within the artist’s own language: light, architecture, and both social and individual memories.
The first four installations of Private Atlas, this solo exhibition that unfolds over time, simultaneously reveal a richness of approaches and a methodological unity. This unity is characterized by multiple sculptural elements that define and, at the same time, atomize space, breaking it apart and recomposing it.
Since the late 1980s, Chiara Dynys’s artistic research, has revolved around a process of deeply rethinking minimalist principles through a freer, more personal approach, incorporating surrealist, psychoanalytic, and narrative elements. Her unique position in Italian art history has led to the creation of environmental installations that take the form of genuine places – sensitive spaces – emerging from a proliferation of sculptural subjects. These subjects, marked by their singular autonomy, are repeated, multiplied, and transformed into imperfect, scattered, and expansive replicas.
In this dissemination, each time autonomous and specific, the perceptual exploration, the material research, executional perfection and linguistic experimentation play a fundamental role.
This first chapter of the exhibition traces the evolution described above, highlighting how this dissemination has permeated Dynys’s practice over thirty-five years of consistent work.

 

Chapter I – 3/4

From March 12th to April 4th, 2025, BUILDING BOX hosts the third artwork of the exhibition project: Sante subito (2024) by artist Chiara Dynys.

The third appointment of La disseminazione della memoria – the first chapter of Private Atlas – presents Sante subito (2024). The artwork delves into another methodological aspect of Dynys’s practice: the development of long-term research projects, disseminated over time and taking shape through different solutions. Sante Subito is the name of a new piece, a hand-embroidered silver work on a precious blue damask fabric. Sante subito is a recurring title in Chiara Dynys’ work. The artist uses that name also for the installation created for the exhibition at the Vincenzo Agnetti Archive in 2023, and is also the title that the artist has associated over the years with a series of works featuring the names of female artists who have been overshadowed by a male-dominated art history. Back in 2008, a cycle of ceramic works, which in that specific case were crowns of thorns, recalled the crucified and crowned with thorns passion of other women, other artists. They too were “Sante subito”. On this occasion, the symbolism of the crown of thorns is revisited on the damask fabric, encircling one of the most significant authors to whom Dynys wants to connect her story: Eva Hesse.

 

________________

 

Private Atlas, by Chiara Dynys, is an anthological exhibition project, structurated in twelve episodes, curated by Alessandro Castiglioni and presented by BUILDING BOX from January 15th, 2025 to January 6th, 2026.

 

For the first time, BUILDING BOX dedicate a year-long monographic exhibition to a single artist, Chiara Dynys – represented by BUILDING – with twelve distinct installations conceived specifically for the exhibition space that overlook via Monte di Pietà 23, Milan.

 

Private Atlas is a solo exhibition that unfolds over time, an experimental project tracing thirty-five years of the artist’s research and activity. The exhibition represents a journey composed by a series of appointments that reveal and highlight poetic aspects of the artist’s work, delving into her biography, her obsessions and her artistic exploration.

As curator Alessandro Castiglioni observes, the exhibition is presented as: “an historical, but also emotional geography of Chiara Dynys’ work.”

 

The exhibition project, conceived as a private atlas, is structured around three main chapters entitled La Disseminazione della memoria [The Dissemination of Memory], Attraversamenti [Crossings] and Viaggio in Italia [Journey Through Italy], presenting, on a monthly basis, historical works and new productions by the artist in site-specific installations designed on purpose for BUILDING BOX’s space.

 

The first chapter, La Disseminazione delle memoria [The Dissemination of Memory] (from January to April, 2025), gathers works where space, atomized and fragmented, reflects on the relationship with forms of Western culture in constant dialogue with one’s identity.

 

The second chapter, Attraversamenti [Crossings] (from May to August, 2025), addresses one of the central themes in the artist’s work: the threshold, conceived as a place, a limit, in both its material and immaterial dimensions.

 

The third chapter, Viaggio in Italia [Journey Through Italy] (from September, 2025 to January, 2026), referencing Rossellini’s iconic masterpiece, explores cinematic imagery, the relationship with the ancient and classical, as well as with popular and vernacular culture.

 

These narratives, like a kaleidoscope—another archetypal form dear to the artist—intertwine, juxtaposing images and imaginaries in a circular continuity over the course of a year. This approach offers a new historical-critical perspective on Chiara Dynys’ work, as suggested by Castiglioni.