elastic stripes and mixed media on wood
cm 30×30
1976
NOTES:
Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Work accompanied by certificate of authenticity and archiving by the Gianni Colombo Archive no. 1440 dated 11/21/2023 signed by Marco Scotini, Luciano Pizzagalli, and Roberto Casiraghi.
Discover the video of the artwork (right-click on the link and select “open link in another browser window”) https://youtube.com/shorts/-TQR6UnaziU?feature=share
This work by Gianni Colombo is an elastic space. As you can see, next to the painted geometric lines there are elastic bands that are not superimposed on the lines, but fixed to the back in this way, creating a sort of three-dimensionality. The glass protecting the work prevents us from moving the elastic bands, but this was the artist’s idea: a work that is elastic, modifiable. We are in a Milan in constant turmoil, where reconstruction after the bombings is constantly changing the spaces around people. The whole world is changing, the first rockets are being launched into space, and the future offers unexpected horizons. Going beyond the idea of representing reality, art captures the disorientation and loss of perceptual certainties, the feeling of an environment in transformation.
In 1968, Colombo won the Venice Biennale prize for Spazio elastico (Elastic Space), an environment in which the movement of elastic bands seen through Wood’s light creates surprising effects of spatial disorientation in the viewer, who becomes an actor in the work. Art, like technology, is projected into the future.