1956 Born in Bergamo, Italy
1957 Moves to Milano
1959 Exhibit at Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica, Milano
1968 Moves to Bologna
1973 Studies at Art School in Penzance, Cornwall
1974 Studies American Contemporary Theater at Maryland University
Follows the Nixon's impeachment trial at the Congress
Moves to Torino
1976 Solo exhibition “Spazio Self-service” at English Studio, Belluno
Moves to Venezia
1976-81 Studies architecture and urban design at IUAV, Venezia
1979 "Desert Landscape", performance with Gino Dal Soler
1979 "Il Travestito Sacro", play with and by Charles Matz
1979 Works as designer at John Pante Architecture workshop
1981-82 Studies at Nuova Scena acting school, Bologna
1982 "In memoriam", play by Eugenio Allegri, Teatro del Riccio
1983 "Memorie Labili", play by Luigi Gozzi, Teatro delle Moline
1984 Serves the Country in the Civil Service
1985 Works as industrial designer
1986 Group exhibition “Italian Festival for Multi-media Work” at PS122, NY
"Notturno Teppista", play by Nino Comba and Dino Campana
Moves to South-east Asia
1990 Moves to Paris
Works as industrial and environmental designer
1996 International design exhibition YUU, Japan Design Foundation, Osaka
2003 "No Swimming", Light/water/city series installation in Chicago
2005 Establishes n-workshop, a design practice
2009 "J'ai la Pêche", Light/water/city performance, la Nuit Blanche, Paris
"Cnit, 50 ans d'Histoires" architectural lighting installation, Paris
2010 "J'ai la Pêche", Light/water/city performance, la Nuit Blanche, Metz
"J'ai la Pêche", Light/water/city project, LED 2010, Milano
2011 Starts the project "Re/source", an objects' biography
Biography in the artist's words:
My real name is Giambattista, but my parents dubbed me Nino when I was 2, the age at which I started my wandering life.
My very first skill and passion was drawing on any available surface.
At age 3, I had my first exhibition.
At 7, I was filling notebooks with technical drawings of machines I had been inventing with a schoolmate of mine who wanted to be an inventor. The following year I built a telescope and started investigating the lunar surface with another schoolmate who wanted to be an astrophysicist.
I was 9 when my father agreed to lend me his measuring tape and sent me and my younger brother to take measurements of the medieval walls surrounding the old town. Back home I drew the plan on a beautiful pale pink sheet of millimeter paper.
My project soon became measuring and tracing the whole urban area, but one day my father announced that we were moving to a new city, so my project was put on hold.
Then, I started school and I enjoyed it while moving and making interesting discoveries about things, people and places. During my studies I started practicing photography, writing and acting. A few cities and years later, I went back to my old project and I started studying architecture and urban design.
Spending time in the wilderness has always been a good drug for me, a necessary and powerful experience which helped me to stay balanced within the city environment. It also brought me to a new and unexpected breakthrough: natural and constructed environments were meaningless without light. I’m aware that it might sound simple now - some giga-lumen later - but the light quality is affecting the way we relate to people and objects, just as day and night mark our lives.
After spending hours in the red light of my darkroom, the world looked different to me, and I felt like I have become a sort of filter myself: everything was so vivid I could see things I would not have seen in normal conditions.
And that’s when I started experimenting with natural and artificial light.