HEINZ MACK
If the Eyes Were not Sun-Like…
“I still believe in ideas. I believe only ideas can change the world. Not arms, not political power.”
Heinz Mack (Lollar, Germany, 1931) is one of the cofunders of the ZERO movement and one of the most consistent structuralist in the field of sculpture and painting. Vibration, movement, rhythm, light and the absence of it are some of the topics that surrounds his ouevre. He was one of the first artist in Europe whose practice introduce new materials as stainless steel, plexiglass or transparent acrylic. He also was a land art Pioneer, noticeable in his well-known Sahara Project (1962/63).
Blue Dynamic Structure, 1958
Synthetic resin on canvas
114 x 95 cm
Unique piece
Untitled (Klassische Chromatik), 2001
Acrylic on canvas
124 x 87 cm
Unique piece
Untitled, 1957/1958
Synthetic resin on muslin
62 x 71 cm
Unique piece
“Alongside all the ‘colors of light’, I need white as the canvas, as the background, as a reflective area for light. Therefore, white always plays a crucial role in the purity and brightness of the colors…Here color becomes an emanation of light, which occurs as both part of the spectrum and as the spectrum. This emanation effects the appearance of the color, which is itself emanating from the canvas and which fills the room.”
Untitled, 2009
Ink on hand-made paper
104 x 131 x 4 cm
Unique piece
Untitled, 2010
Ink on hand-made paper
146 x 105 x 4 cm
Unique piece
“instead of using the old-fashioned principle of composition, we developed the new principle of structures and serial interferences in a logical interflow of rhythmic elements. In the case of Piene and Uecker, these elements are points, while in my case I used lines in their parallel structure, which intercommunicated.”
Untitled, 2015
Ink on hand-made paper
87 x 122 x 5 cm
Unique piece
Untitled, 2015
Ink on hand-made paper
120 x 84 x 6 cm
Unique piece
Untitled, 2015
Ink on hand-made paper
76 x 112 cm
Unique piece
Untitled, 2015
Ink on hand-made paper
120 x 84 cm
Unique piece
“For me, light is immaterial, and in my case, I prefer to make works that are instruments for light. My sculptures do have a kind of function: of making light visible. If you look at some examples, of course there is a certain similarity to what you can see if you look at the sea and if the sun is shining on the sea and there is a wind that makes the waves reflect the light in a particular way—there is a certain similarity to what happens in nature in the work, but it’s not comparable with nature. It’s not an illusion of nature: it has its own reality.”
Vibration, 1958
Hand embossed aluminium on masonite board
47 x 54 x 7 cm
Unique piece
Mirror wall for light and movement (Model for a monumental project), 1960/2015
Mirrored glass, stainless steel, wood
113.5 x 169.5 x 20 cm
Unique piece
In 1959 Mack drafted the so called “Sahara-Project”, which he started realizing in the African desert from 1962/63 on. Several times, he installed an “artificial garden” in the desert, consisting of sand- and wing-reliefs, cubes, mirrors, sails, banners and monumental light-stelae. This experimental practice with the force of light is shown in the highly respected and awarded film “Tele-Mack”, which was made in 1968.