Votorantim, Brazil
09/05/2026 - 10/10/2026

The Space and the Place

Space and Place, is the new exhibition at DAN’s Interior Gallery, curated by Fábio Magalhães and expography by Fernando Poles Arquitetos. The exhibition brings together 75 works and proposes a reading of the way in which space is transformed into a place when it passes through the body and memory. The chair, present in different works, conducts this investigation: everyday object, human measure, resting point, mark of intimacy and also opening to a wider dimension, linked to time and space. Based on this axis, Fábio Magalhães brings together works by Adolfo Estrada, Almir Mavignier, Dionísio Del Santo, Ferreira Gullar, Gonçalo Ivo, José Roberto Aguilar, José Spaniol, Sergio Fingerman and Valentino Fialdini. The journey articulates paintings, objects, geometric and abstract works around a central question: how can a private situation contain an idea of the world? The nucleus surrounding Ferreira Gullar introduces this issue directly. In Space Poems, a set of nine pieces painted on wood, the work is built on the relationship between structure and reading in time. Each piece proposes a situation that articulates surface, gesture and perception. The space unfolds in duration. It is from this field that the presence of the chair gains density. In José Roberto Aguilar’s work, Van Gogh’s chair appears dislocated inside the painting. The reference goes to the two canvases made in 1888: his own chair, with the pipe, and Gauguin’s chair, with books and a burning candle holder, analyzed by Georges Bataille in the essay “Van Gogh’s Sacrificial Mutilation and the Cut Ear”. In these two images, the painter establishes a difference between modes of presence: one linked to everyday life, the other to waiting and to a more symbolic dimension. When taken up by Aguilar, these images enter into another regime. The chair remains an anchor point, while the pictorial space expands around it, bringing the object closer to a cosmic scale. According to the curator, this passage between the intimate and the unlimited accompanies an ancient idea: the human desire to achieve what exceeds one’s own condition. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, this quest for permanence crosses the experience of time. Here, it is linked to space – to the way in which the body is situated and projects meaning. Space, time and place are articulated. “One thing is inside the other”, observes Fábio Magalhães. From then on, the works are articulated around this continuity. The largest group in the exhibition is by Dionísio Del Santo, with about 30 works, in dialogue with works by Almir Mavignier, in which the image is organized as a constellation, in which repetition and variation produce a continuous expansion of the visual field. In Gonçalo Ivo, color underpins the painting. Sergio Fingerman works with an image in constant instability. José Spaniol moves the chair to the symbolic field, altering his perception as an everyday object and inserting it into a dimension of movement. Adolfo Estrada and Valentino Fialdini bring geometry closer to an open condition, without definitive closure. The continuity between interior and exterior crosses this group. The expography, signed by Fernando Poles Arquitetos, enters this same field. The firm was invited to develop an architectural interpretation that participates in the definition of the complex. A tunnel crosses the gallery space and connects two moments of the exhibition. The journey alters perception, establishes a rhythm and reorganizes the relationship between body and work. The architecture reinforces the passage between scales that underpins the exhibition

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Curator: Fabio Magalhães

Expography: Fernando Poles Architects

Photographs: João Cazzaniga