Eschewing labels that alternately grouped it with American Minimalism or Italian Arte Povera, Laura Grisi’s artistic practice, starting in the 1960s, records the dramatic effect of natural phenomena, capturing their qualities in objects or technological settings that offer an unusual, insightful image of progress. With their seductive industrial finish, the looming pillars of her series Sunset Light (1967) present a high-tech version of the visual experience evoked in the title. The yellow neon core suggests the warm colour of the sky and casts a soft light on the viewer, whose movements are reflected by the Plexiglas to create a shifting surface, reminiscent of the sun’s. Grisi conceived these luminous columns as elements poised between nature and artifice, calibrating their light to create different moods and sensations. Aside from the obvious spectacle for the senses – which she later achieved by simulating other natural phenomena such as rain or wind – these works by Grisi, using mechanical and technological stratagems, create real or imagined landscapes that place viewers at the centre of an immersive, environmental experience: coming into alignment with the natural or artificial aspects of the sculptures, the body feels attuned with energies that alternate between physical and intimate, scientific and spiritual.
Stefano Mudu
