"[...] Whatever our intentions in constructing an image, the image will produce in the observer a tendency to relate it to objects and concepts from his everyday experience.
At the root of this habit lies the traditional interpretation of visual art as the 'reprodution of the visible'.
Psychology cautions us that there is an innate tendency in man to interpret any new experience in such a manner as to conciliate it with previous experiences. But psychology also informs us that man's brain is able to learn, or divise new operations and means of combining the results of old experiences, and hence to invent new tests and new categories.
Our work, in particular, consists in giving a concrete realization to ideas which may be communicated only optically, not, for example, verbally, and which otherwise would go unexpressed.
It may be possible to construct the visual work of art as one would construct a test, retaining sufficient perceptive ambiguity in the components to prevent the observer from launching himself on a single know interpretation. Furthermore, we may observe that in the fields of art dependent on vision, the aesthetic appreciation of (habitable) architecture derives principally from its structural problems. On this basis, in our opinion, we may construct visual situations which retain similar characteristics; zones of psychic involvement in which the observer will be helped to take his bearings from the interaction of the component parts, and, consequently, from the structural mechanism of the work, passing from mere sensory to logical comprehension. The observer will thus prsogress from passive viewing to active comprehension of the concept, trasforming himself from spectator into technician. This trasnformation, on as wide a scale as possible, from a spectator public into a technician public, is one of the objectives to which our work constantly aspires.[...]"
Gianni Colombo, Galleria La Salita, Rom, november 1965.
Click here to view the pictures about Colombo's artworks.
Visit the virtual exhibitions tour:
Gianni Colombo - Grazia Varisco (2006)
Gli ambienti del gruppo T (2006)
1950-1960s Kinetic Abstraction (2007)
Gianni Colombo. Ambienti (2008)
Gianni Colombo. Ambienti (2009)
To see other artworks please contact the Archivio Gianni Colombo.