WEM EDITORIAL #13 CHIARA DYNYS
Enlightening Books (2022)
On the occasion of the second edition of Roma Arte in Nuvola 2022, WEM Gallery presented for the first time the latest iconic Enlightening Books series, a work that has distinguished Chiara Dynys’ artistic production for more than a decade. The work consists of the creation of an illuminated library that encloses within it archived knowledge between memory and oblivion. The installation is part of the permanent collections of the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome; Collection of the Quirinale, Rome; Collection of MUVE – Musei Civici of Venice, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice; Collection of the MA*GA Museum of Gallarate. The exhibition project was accompanied by a critical essay by Alessandro Castiglioni.
Quotes from
Books and Words. Notes on the work of Chiara Dynys
Text edited by Alessandro Castiglioni
The books and book series created over the past two decades by Chiara Dynys, are to all intents and purposes, sculptural and installation elements that interweave the archetypal dimension of the “book form,” to which Western culture has and continues to refer as a metaphor for knowledge, and “light” as an immaterial and environmental element, which takes on the meaning of discovery and vision.
This perspective allows Chiara Dynys’ research to be placed within a broader debate related to the relationship between word and image and in broader terms, that of the artist’s book, which since the historical avant-gardes, characterizes a specific discourse related to contemporary art practice. This reflection is not entirely unprecedented, and as proof of this, it suffices to mention Dynys’ participation in 2007 in “La parola nell’arte” at the Mart in Rovereto, one of the most important landmark exhibitions related precisely to the exploration of the relationship between image and word throughout the 20th century.
As I have already pointed out in the book Chiara Dynys and the Filmic Imaginary (Skira, 2022) this overlapping of imaginaries is to be found in the coexistence of a post-minimalist and a surrealist matrix that coexist in the artist’s work. In these terms and in this way the book becomes, yes a sculptural element, but also a space of crossing cultural references.
