Gianni Colombo — Spazio Elastico

1967

Artists: Gianni Colombo · Year: 1967 · Medium: Environmental installation — programmed light cubes in a darkened room, periodic motorized expansion · Substrate: Luminous elastic grid with motorized actuators, programmed to expand and contract on cycles; viewer-interactive via presence-sensing · Place: Milan, Italy · Institution: Gruppo T — exhibited internationally, won Venice Biennale Golden Lion 1968 Gianni Colombo was a founding member of Gruppo T, the Milan-based kinetic and programmed-art group active from 1959 onward, and his Spazio Elastico (Elastic Space), first shown in 1967, is one of the signature programmed installations of the Italian neo-avant-garde. The work consisted of an entire room transformed into a luminous three-dimensional grid of elastic cords, moving in programmed expansion and contraction patterns driven by motorized actuators. Visitors could walk through the space as the grid moved around them. Spazio Elastico won the Golden Lion for Grafica Generale at the 1968 Venice Biennale — a major art-world recognition of a work built on programmed mechanical behavior, at the same moment the computer-art debate was heating up at Stuttgart and the ICA London. Colombo's work was not strictly computer-generated; the programs were mechanical-electronic, closer to Seawright and Ihnatowicz than to Nees. But the conceptual framework was identical: a work whose primary substance is a temporal program, realized through electronic-mechanical systems. Gruppo T — Giovanni Anceschi, Davide Boriani, Gianni Colombo, Gabriele De Vecchi, Grazia Varisco — is the major Italian contribution to the first-generation programmed-art discourse, in parallel with (and in correspondence with) the Nouveau Tendances circle in France, the ZERO group in Germany, and the British Computer Arts Society. Colombo's work was the most widely shown internationally. Lore The Venice Biennale Golden Lion for Spazio Elastico was awarded in 1968 in the context of student protests that nearly shut down the Biennale. The recognition of a programmed environment installation at that moment — at the major international contemporary-art venue — was a significant institutional validation of the kinetic-programmed tradition. Gruppo T's correspondence with Max Bense, with Nouveau Tendances members, and with the Computer Arts Society in London is preserved in fragments across Italian university archives. Sources • Fondazione Marconi — Gianni Colombo archive • Archivio Gianni Colombo (family archive) • Celant, Germano — Gruppo T: Anceschi, Boriani, Colombo, De Vecchi, Varisco (Skira, 2005)