The wonderful December at the Chirale geometrical sites

We’re getting ready for a month made of small gestures, shared processes and encounters that feel more like a dialogue than an event. To open it we’ve chosen to start with Subtexto, an exhibition that explores the painter’s quintessential support: canvas, observed from the original fibre right through to priming techniques.

The show travels through three different ways of thinking about canvas: its traditional construction, its preparation as a surface for digital printing in collaboration with APA Group, and finally a canvas made from a recipe entirely developed in the Chirale labs, composed of algae and cellulose pulp — an experimental material that bears witness to our research on processes and materials.

As always, the spirit is that of our “process gallery”: the exhibition takes shape in the shop window, where the installation will be open to the public on Thursday 4 December, from 11:00 to 18:00. Alongside the show we present a micro-collection of four objects made in the Chirale labs and available for sale throughout the exhibition: Solo Tela, a natural cotton support conceived as a roll to be unrolled; Fattoapposta, the laser-cut reclaimed-wood roll holder; Nata Pronta, a series of canvases with organic, modular shapes; and finally O., a small canvas with a keyring that translates the spirit of our experiments into miniature.

The ideal day to visit the exhibition will be Saturday 6 December, from 11:00 to 19:00, coinciding with the new gathering of the Circolo del Filo. On that day the Spazio Chirale shop window will turn into a large open loom, where visitors can contribute to the construction of a “window-format” canvas by adding a thread or a passage to the weave that will grow progressively. It isn’t a workshop, nor a performance, but a direct way of showing how building a canvas has always been a process born of shared contribution. The exhibition will remain open for the whole month.

The following week, on Saturday 13 December, another tradition will join our December: the inauguration of Riad’s nativity scene. Over a year ago we opened our third laboratory in Via Ignazio Persico, in the historic shopfront that for more than fifty years housed Il Bazar, a toy and household-goods shop deeply rooted in the memory of the Garbatella neighbourhood. We kept the old sign for that very reason: because a place isn’t erased, it continues. And we continue by hosting Riad, who used to prepare the nativity scene for the neighbourhood every year.

For this nativity we’ve chosen a participatory process: many people are lending figurines, lights and small objects that will become part of a collective nativity scene.

On Saturday 13 December, from 11:00 to 13:00, we’ll celebrate Riad’s ninetieth birthday with an open breakfast in the workshop — a simple gesture that aims to be a thank-you rather than a formal celebration.

Right after that, we’ll move to the Montesacro neighbourhood where, as guests of La Vecchia, the new fashion atelier of our former student Flavia Colantoni, we’ll lead a workshop dedicated to buttons and resins. It will be an afternoon devoted to the transformation of matter and to the production of unique buttons in epoxy and mineral resins: a way to bring attention back to a detail that’s often marginal and make it the protagonist of the process.

This is how we prepare for December: not as a calendar, but as a process. A month that invites you in not to watch, but to take part.