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Lot Essay
'Simple is complex at the same time; or better still: as a phenomenon, simplicity evokes complexity, the complex.'
(Heinz Mack quoted in 'Simple is complex' in exh. cat. Heinz Mack Light - Space - Colour, Bonn 2011, p. 37)
Heinz Mack, who in 1957 founded the ZERO group with Otto Piene, sought to revitalize the arts in the war-ravaged country by eschewing subjective expressionism in favor of exploring new forms of perception through innovative materials and design principles.
'In short, we were goaded on by the question, how could we make a fresh start, having resolved irreversibly that we would abandon the old, secure niches. We were motivated to take on the crisis in order to overcome it by creative means, for all the doubts, all the vexation, all the isolation associated with such a tack, all the wilful criticism, the ill will and derision with which bourgeois society and its institutional transmitters of cultural values ostracised us. The zero-point that was ZERO's premise was a piece of fiction by which we hoped to be able to overcome ossified matrices of thinking and seeing, in favour of a more open world. We wanted, and had to forsake the familiar territories in order to seek out new spaces whose coordinates were unknown. In these wayless spaces only the way was the goal. There were times when ZERO was animated by this spirit.' (Heinz Mack quoted on https://www.zerofoundation.de/statements.html)
Mack describes this process himself as 'painting as a dynamic structure - which completely sufficient in itself - displays a new vitality of painterly nuance! The exclusivity of a completely nonfigurative, dynamic compositorial structure in astronomical distance to nature becomes the expression of pure emotion; it presents itself as a new reality whose secret beauty we merely suspect.' Mack has only created a few paintings, they signify the experimental phase of his route towards light as a compositorial energy, the actual goal of ZERO (Paul Vogt, Malerei der Gegenwart von 1945 bis heute, Munich and Zurich 1981, p. 100).
Farb-Relief from 1957 is an example of Heinz Mack's first dynamic structures, which he transcribed into painting and drawing as well as plaster and metal reliefs.
(Heinz Mack quoted in 'Simple is complex' in exh. cat. Heinz Mack Light - Space - Colour, Bonn 2011, p. 37)
Heinz Mack, who in 1957 founded the ZERO group with Otto Piene, sought to revitalize the arts in the war-ravaged country by eschewing subjective expressionism in favor of exploring new forms of perception through innovative materials and design principles.
'In short, we were goaded on by the question, how could we make a fresh start, having resolved irreversibly that we would abandon the old, secure niches. We were motivated to take on the crisis in order to overcome it by creative means, for all the doubts, all the vexation, all the isolation associated with such a tack, all the wilful criticism, the ill will and derision with which bourgeois society and its institutional transmitters of cultural values ostracised us. The zero-point that was ZERO's premise was a piece of fiction by which we hoped to be able to overcome ossified matrices of thinking and seeing, in favour of a more open world. We wanted, and had to forsake the familiar territories in order to seek out new spaces whose coordinates were unknown. In these wayless spaces only the way was the goal. There were times when ZERO was animated by this spirit.' (Heinz Mack quoted on https://www.zerofoundation.de/statements.html)
Mack describes this process himself as 'painting as a dynamic structure - which completely sufficient in itself - displays a new vitality of painterly nuance! The exclusivity of a completely nonfigurative, dynamic compositorial structure in astronomical distance to nature becomes the expression of pure emotion; it presents itself as a new reality whose secret beauty we merely suspect.' Mack has only created a few paintings, they signify the experimental phase of his route towards light as a compositorial energy, the actual goal of ZERO (Paul Vogt, Malerei der Gegenwart von 1945 bis heute, Munich and Zurich 1981, p. 100).
Farb-Relief from 1957 is an example of Heinz Mack's first dynamic structures, which he transcribed into painting and drawing as well as plaster and metal reliefs.