(born in Lollar, Hessen in 1931)
“Lichtfächer im Raum”, 1965, signed, dated mack 65, aluminium, stainless steel, wood, plexiglass, 105 x 135 x 7 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Heinz Mack, Mönchengladbach September 1990, signed by the artist.
The present work is listed in the supplement to the catalogue raisonné, Skulpturen 1953–1986, with no. 908 A.

Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany - acquired directly from the artist

“The exclusivity of a completely non-representational dynamic sculptural structure, astronomically removed from nature, becomes an expression of pure emotion; it presents itself as a new reality that we suspect holds a secret beauty.” (Heinz Mack, ZERO 1, 7. Abendausstellung, April 1958, in: 4321 ZERO, Düsseldorf 2012, p. 16)

“Ideally a certain space, a certain light, a certain sculpture and a certain viewer will come together; this seems a natural course, but it is not.” (Heinz Mack: www.mack-kunst.com/en/Sculpture.htm)

The founders of ZERO, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, joined by Günther Uecker a little later on, aimed to renounce the stylistic idioms that had prevailed to date, along with traditional principles of artistic composition, and to reduce artistic devices to the minimum possible, all in the hope of sensitising one’s own perception of the essential, light, and movement. Light and the space for movement, in their universal meanings and great complexity of simplicity, became the cornerstones of art for the ZERO artists.
“The materiality of sculpture remains the starting point for all illusions. The immateriality of Mack’s spaces is never created independently of an object; the illusion is rooted in an object, and appears as a secondary experience.” The illusionism that Heinz Mack wanted to conjure up primarily serves to create a new quality of perception: using the viewer’s enjoyment of beauty, it aims to create a new experience of the space as a whole. “Light and mirroring is not used as art for art’s sake – as demonstrated by Mack’s statements on immateriality and his references to the ‘spiritual’ realm. The metaphors of angels and light are used by Mack as utopian entities that go beyond narrowly defined religiosity. The angels in the Flügel works are understood by Mack as bringers of light, and not as religious messengers: ‘light as the spiritual space within which angels move is shown by the visibility of the surfaces, the energetic vibrations of which point to the impenetrability of matter for visual thinking.’ Through the heightening of perception, potential insights are pointed out, and the human imagination is also supposed to latch on to these.” (Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, Heinz Mack, Kinetik, exhibition catalogue, Düsseldorf 2011, p. 46)
Light as the controlling element of the Lichtfächer changes this into unique, living kinetic objects. Heinz Mack used a honeycomb for his Lichtfächer (Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, exhibition catalogue, p. 154), a fine mesh of expanded aluminium, originating from technology used in the aerospace sector. This technoid materiality means that the metal fabric can be given gentle curvatures, and that varying patterns can be created from the individual honeycombs (ibid., p. 129). The artistic intention of making light, structure and movement visible is accentuated in a particular way in the Lichtflügel as a result of the delicate structure of the woven honeycomb. Light is fragmented in the depths of the honeycomb and makes the entire surface shimmer in different ways depending on the viewer’s positioning. The small wing surfaces on both sides of the grid, carved into the base plate of Lichtfächer im Raum and differing in the materiality of their surface, add further reinforcement to the iridescent effect of the incoming light, and create energetic vibrations around this very early piece of work. The fine mesh enables Heinz Mack to accentuate his central principle of light articulation on this surface, with the immaterial phenomenon which appears in conjunction with this, thereby providing the viewer with a completely new quality of perception.

Photo certificate:
Heinz Mack, Mönchengladbach September 1990, signed by the artist.

The present work is listed in the supplement to the catalogue raisonné, Skulpturen 1953–1986, with no. 908 A.

Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany - acquired directly from the artist

The founders of ZERO, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, joined by Günther Uecker a little later on, aimed to renounce the stylistic idioms that had prevailed to date, along with traditional principles of artistic composition, and to reduce artistic devices to the minimum possible, all in the hope of sensitising one’s own perception of the essential, light, and movement. Light and the space for movement, in their universal meanings and great complexity of simplicity, became the cornerstones of art for the ZERO artists.

“The materiality of sculpture remains the starting point for all illusions. The immateriality of Mack’s spaces is never created independently of an object; the illusion is rooted in an object, and appears as a secondary experience.” The illusionism that Heinz Mack wanted to conjure up primarily serves to create a new quality of perception: using the viewer’s enjoyment of beauty, it aims to create a new experience of the space as a whole. “Light and mirroring is not used as art for art’s sake – as demonstrated by Mack’s statements on immateriality and his references to the ‘spiritual’ realm. The metaphors of angels and light are used by Mack as utopian entities that go beyond narrowly defined religiosity. The angels in the Flügel works are understood by Mack as bringers of light, and not as religious messengers: ‘light as the spiritual space within which angels move is shown by the visibility of the surfaces, the energetic vibrations of which point to the impenetrability of matter for visual thinking.’ Through the heightening of perception, potential insights are pointed out, and the human imagination is also supposed to latch on to these.”
(Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, Heinz Mack, Kinetik, exhibition catalogue, Düsseldorf 2011, p. 46)

Light as the controlling element of the Lichtfächer changes this into unique, living kinetic objects. Heinz Mack used a honeycomb for his Lichtfächer (Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, exhibition catalogue, p. 154), a fine mesh of expanded aluminium, originating from technology used in the aerospace sector. This technoid materiality means that the metal fabric can be given gentle curvatures, and that varying patterns can be created from the individual honeycombs (ibid., p. 129). The artistic intention of making light, structure and movement visible is accentuated in a particular way in the Lichtflügel as a result of the delicate structure of the woven honeycomb. Light is fragmented in the depths of the honeycomb and makes the entire surface shimmer in different ways depending on the viewer’s positioning. The small wing surfaces on both sides of the grid, carved into the base plate of Lichtfächer im Raum and differing in the materiality of their surface, add further reinforcement to the iridescent effect of the incoming light, and create energetic vibrations around this very early piece of work. The fine mesh enables Heinz Mack to accentuate his central principle of light articulation on this surface, with the immaterial phenomenon which appears in conjunction with this, thereby providing the viewer with a completely new quality of perception.