Latest works by Chiara Dynys and Sean Shanahan on display at Villa Panza

Villa and Collection Panza in Varese welcomes from May 19 to Sept. 5, 2021 a new exhibition involving artists Chiara Dynys and Sean Shanahan, who are already part of Giuseppe Panza’s collection. Sudden Time, this is the title of the exhibition curated by Anna Bernardini and Giorgio Verzotti, refers to a symphony written in 1993 by English composer George Benjamin, where poet Wallace Steven ’s lines “It was like a sudden time in a timeless world” resonate. The sudden time of enlightenment and revelation represents the time of every artist’s intuition.

Recent outcomes of the two artists’ research are on display in the exhibition, and the setting in Villa Panza makes possible encounters and comparisons with the ethical and aesthetic vision of Giuseppe Panza di Biumo. Eight large installations, including paintings and sculptures completed between 2018 and 2021, exhibited here for the first time in the rustic spaces on the ground floor and in the park.

Chiara Dynys presents three site-specific works for the Villa’s rustic spaces: in the small stable is Camini delle Fate (2020-2021), which consists of thirty-four Murano glass pieces of different colors and sizes with gold leaf in the center, set into a large black wall. The work is intended to evoke the 11th-century dwellings of hermits and anchorites carved out of rock in Cappadocia. In the first carriage house is Joseph’s Door (2020-2021), an opalescent glass fusion, while on the three walls of the second carriage house is projected Melancholia (2020-2021), consisting of the image of a luminous circle that slowly changes color and is overlaid with an opaque black circle, as if we were witnessing a lunar eclipse.

In the spaces of the Great Stable are placed three monochrome paintings by Sean Shanahan: among them, Untitled (S.T), from 2021, which occupies the back wall of the room. A yellow hexagonal shape seems to float on the wall, painted by the artist in orange, and rise as if attracted by the natural light coming from the lunette at the top of the wall. On the side walls two more pictorial interventions composed of differently colored modules with tapered edges. Two sculptures in dialogue with nature are then installed in the park of the Villa: Chiara Dynys proposes Giuseppe’s Door (2020-2021), a large-scale elaboration (310 x 260 x 70 cm) of the sculpture already exhibited inside dedicated to Count Panza, made of corten and photosensitive Murano glass. The iridescent material charges with light and releases it in the dark as a “phantasmal fluorescence.” By contrast, Sean Shanahan proposes Alma, a large colored steel sculpture (260 x 380 x 35 cm) installed in the third parterre of the park: charged with unusual colors for steel, red and lilac, the sculpture renounces volume and presents itself as a large framed surface, the planes of which are breaking up and opening up as if reaching out into space.

In her works Chiara Dynys prefers the use of a wide variety of materials, including glass, methacrylate, ceramics and textiles, which are modulated through light and color: according to Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, “Chiara Dynys is an artist of light. She has chosen to work with the impalpable substance that is pure energy, but that is not just energy, it becomes something that warms us, makes us see the world,” and her works, from small to monumental, “transport the visitor to an immaterial dimension made of pure substance.”

Sean Shanahan elaborates his monochrome painting-objects from a reflection on color and chooses monochrome as the main form of expression that is radical in its essentiality. The artist himself claims that he arrived at those results from a “love of stasis,” of still life and its tradition, which represents what comes closest to his ideal of painting. Monochrome brings with it a feeling of rebirth “in a newly emptied space, the space of purity and aesthetic freedom.” Giuseppe Panza writes of his research “Sean’s color is reflected light, it is a property of the surface, but in the paintings of this artist it becomes substance. We could begin a philosophical discourse, following Spinoza’s ideas. Substance is not only matter, but everything that is knowable. In this way Sean’s paintings are substance.”

The exhibition, presented by FAI - Fondo Ambiente Italiano, can be visited by reservation only every day, excluding non-holiday Mondays and Tuesdays, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Tickets: Full 15 euros, free for FAI members, reduced student (19-25 years) 10 euros, reduced children (6-18 years) 7 euros. Free up to 5 years old.
For reservations www.villapanza.it; phone 0332 283960; email faibiumo@fondoambiente.it

Image: Chiara Dynys, Melancholia

Latest works by Chiara Dynys and Sean Shanahan on display at Villa Panza

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