Sandi Renko (Trieste, 1949)

was born in Trieste in 1949 and studied at the Istituto d’Arte Nordio among artists who marked the artistic avante-garde of Trieste, such as Miela Reina, Enzo Cogno and Ugo Cara’.
In the 1970s, Renko moved to Padova, where he worked successfully in industrial design, a specialization that did not prevent him from delving into other fields. It was there that Renko became caught up in the cultural ferment of the artistic movement of the avante-garde, and where he came into contact with Gruppo N, dedicating his research especially to programmed art and optical art. The artist’s work is therefore the result of a journey that started at the end of the 1960s in the field of programmed and optical art. Renko participated in group exhibitions, “happenings” and other events of the time, simultaneously making his mark in the field of design and industrial planning.
Renko’s modus operandi is usually to set up a work surface of corrugated cardboard that has been treated with acrylic colors, using solid geometric structures with seemingly elementary patterns based on a cube motif. The modular development of space is treated with methodological rigor, offering the viewer variable sequences that are reduced to essential visual elements, where vertical lines, legible from several angles, bring life to the images.
The works of Sandi Renki use simple lines that vary in length and thickness, creating volumetric effects that take on kinesthetic characteristics when observed from different viewpoints. As happens in nature, the subjects become modulated phenomena of geometric structures that change according to elementary patterns. Adhering to the neo-avante-garde spirit that developed in Italy in the 1960s, Sandi Renki elaborates his personal visual and architectural lexicon, experimenting with perceptive and multisensory variables, and diversifying light effects.