Heinz Mack

About

In 1957 Heinz Mack (born in 1931), together with Otto Piene, founded the artists’ collective ZERO in Düsseldorf. The group was joined in 1961 by Günter Uecker. Aiming to set themselves apart from the Tachisme and Art Informel of the day, these artists chose as their particular modes of expression light, monochrome paintwork, movement, serial structures, and performances that addressed the audience. Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Enrico Castellani, Piero Manzoni, and many more were among the artists allied to ZERO.

Heinz Mack came to the fore in the 1960s, with his huge relief structures and his columns of light erected in the sands of the desert. “His material” came to be aluminium foil, with its silvery shine and extreme light reflectivity.

Light as a direct mode of expression continues to be a defining characteristic of the style of Mack's works. The monochrome, serial structures found unique expression in his black and white works. Light is reduced to white, while black echoes this by providing depth, so that these pieces have the character of reliefs, even if they are simply created by frottage technique on paper.

Light also appears in the form of gleaming chromaticity, which retains the formal severity of the image’s structure. Mack's deeply seated propensity for Mediterranean light is perfectly expressed in the glowing shades of this saturated chromaticity. His studio in Ibiza is the site of his inspiration for this, and he also works in Mönchengladbach.

The exhibition shows works from both of these groups of work.