Private Atlas, Chiara Dynys – Chapter II – 7/8

Chapter II – Attraversamenti
May – August, 2025
BUILDING BOX

Texts by Alessandro Castiglioni

The second chapter of Private Atlas, an exhibition tracing Chiara Dynys’ journey through twelve installations for BUILDING BOX, explores boundaries and thresholds — hence its title, Attraversamenti [Crossings]. Many of the artist’s works function as places where experiences unfold, events emerge, and limits — both material and immaterial — are imagined and overcome. The notion of transition, transformation, and the ambiguity of thresholds has frequently been central to Dynys’ work, both in a physical and symbolic sense. Her approach is never static: the idea of duality —entry and exit, opening and closure, light and darkness — is not presented as fixed, but rather as part of an ongoing process, a dynamic state.
This entropic experience takes shape and is conveyed through the four installations created for this second chapter, each employing different forms: from light-sensitive lenticular surfaces that transform with the viewer’s movement to a series of architectural archetypes intersected by objects, lights, or spectacular atmospheric phenomena.

In Attraversamenti [Crossings] we also find works that trace the artist’s research through various historical moments, reflecting the complexity and diversity of her explorations. In this sense, the variety of media Dynys employs further evokes the theme of crossing: from photography to glass sculpture, from synthetic materials to moving images.
This concept of passage is also evident in her dialogue with spaces and nature: lights, fog, and the Northern Lights are phenomena the artist both traverses and invites us to experience—if only visually—through the windows of BUILDING BOX, and once again in the imprint left upon our memory. For Chiara Dynys, crossing is thus a non-negotiable condition, a metaphor for the very essence of being an artist.

Chapter II – 7/8

The third installment of Attraversamenti [Crossings] — the second chapter of the Private Atlas project — features Giuseppe’s Door (2021/2024), on view from July 2nd to July 24th, 2025.
Giuseppe’s Door is Chiara Dynys’ tribute to one of the most significant figures in 20th-century international art history — collector and personal friend of the artist, Giuseppe Panza di Biumo. Created after the great patron’s passing, the work celebrates his love for geometry, color, and the minimalist synthesis of forms through a series of different sculptures in cast colored glass, which effectively become thresholds — doors.
The glass works exhibited here are part of a broader project originating from a large-scale environmental and installation-based version of Giuseppe’s Door, conceived and designed in 2021 for Villa Panza in Varese, where the heart of the count’s renowned collection is still preserved.