Heinz Mack stands as one of the most significant figures in post-war European art, well known as co-founder of the ZERO movement alongside Otto Piene in 1957. His multifaceted oeuvre encompasses the dynamic structures featuring dynamism through line, light, and relief; kinetic light sculptures utilizing aluminum, mirrors, and water; and the monumental rotors series to set sculptures in motion. Heinz’s work extends to monumental urban commissions, light reliefs, light stelae, and his ongoing chromatic constellations painting series, begun in 1991.
From the selection of the material to the composition of the object to its position in space, Mack’s works are conceived as an echo sounder. They record the on-site lighting conditions and transform them into a pictorial work. Light is not applied to highlight a color or to play with the surface, but is a stand-alone artistic medium, and with it, everything it carries across the visible spectrum. Surfaces, structures, and edges become graphic material; the optical properties of light interacting with the applied materials, such as brilliance or transparency, bundling or refraction, reflection or absorption, become the pictorial material.
Heinz Mack’s aesthetic vocabulary adheres to the geometries of light. Lines, surfaces, layers, cuts, axes, and compositions are designed to stage the performativity of light. They form a system that generates an aesthetic situation. Rejecting color as an expressive vehicle, Heinz cultivated what he called “pure, grand, objective clarity,” employing monochromatic white surfaces, aluminum reliefs, and kinetic mechanisms to render the immaterial phenomena of light and time visible.
Over the past two decades, Heinz’s artistic practice has demonstrated remarkable continuity and expansion rather than radical reinvention, maintaining his lifelong “luminous vocation” exploring the physical properties of light and their material responses in concrete art.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022 Venice (it), BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE MARCIANA
2017 St. Moritz (ch), LAKE ST. MORITZ
2016 Istanbul (tr), SAKIP SABANCI MUSEUM
2015 Baden-baden (de), MUSEUM FRIEDER BURDA
2015 Istanbul (tr), SAKIP SABANCI MUSEUM
2001 Tehran (ir), TEHRAN MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
1973 Paris (fr), MUSÉE D’ART MODERNE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS
1972 Berlin (de), AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE
1971 Essen (de), MUSEUM FOLKWANG
1966 New York (us), HOWARD WISE GALLERY
1960 Milan (it), GALLERIA AZIMUT
1959 Paris (fr), GALERIE IRIS CLERT
1957 Duesseldorf (de), GALERIE SCHMELDA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2014 New York (us), SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
1977 Kassel (de), DOCUMENTA 6
1977 Münster (de), SKULPTUR-PROJEKTE
1970 Venice (it), 35TH VENICE BIENNALE
1968 Kassel (de), DOCUMENTA 4
1965 New York (us), MOMA
1965 Bern (ch), KUNSTHALLE
1964 Kassel (de), DOCUMENTA 3
1963 Zagreb (hr), NOVE TENDENCIJE 2
1961 Zagreb (hr), NOVE TENDENCIJE 1
1959 Kassel (de), DOCUMENTA 2
ZERO
1958–1966 ZERO Network
with Otto Piene, Guenther Uecker, a.o.
STUDIES
1956 Cologne (de), COLOGNE UNIVERSITY, State Teaching Exam
1953 Duesseldorf (de), ART ACADEMY, State Teaching Exam
BIO
Based in Moenchengladbach (de)
1931 Born in Lollar (de)
LINKS
mackfoundation.com
zerofoundation.de
CREDIT
AUTHOR Bettina Pelz
PUBLSIHED 31 MAY 26