COLOGNE.- The art movement ZERO is enjoying a widespread renaissance at the moment – and with it, the person and diverse oeuvre of Heinz Mack, one of its main protagonists. The latest exhibition in Museum Frieder Burda is devoted to a particular aspect of his creative work – his reliefs, which serve as outstanding examples of his plastic-sculptural works because they give expression to one of the central factors of his artistic approach: the interplay between light and shade.

Heinz Mack, who was born in 1931 in Lollar, Hessen, and Otto Piene jointly founded the group ZERO in Dusseldorf around 1957/58. They were soon joined by Günther Uecker. Even at this early stage, Mack began addressing the subjects of vibration and light. His early pictures, called Dynamic Structures, are deliberately reduced to a scale of black and white values and based on vertical or horizontal straight lines. Later, he produced reliefs made of pressed metal foils, Plexiglas and aluminium. Around 1960, he also created the first “rotors”, in which individual elements with relief-like structures were moved by means of motors. Alongside light, movement now played a key role in his oeuvre – Mack was to become a leading representative of both kinetic art and light art.

It was in his non-objective sculptures, and especially in his reliefs, that Heinz Mack discovered his own specific way of designing light. In the process, he works on the appearance of light not only through the vibrant interchange of illumination and shadow but also with various different, but mainly glossy, materials. Through the plastic structure of the surfaces and the different “light-responsiveness” of the selected materials, light is reflected, absorbed and scattered. This results in sculptures of impressive clarity and surprising vibrancy.

It was in the mid-1950s that Mack began his first experiments in the area of reliefs, which he has continued since then using various materials and techniques. The works range from small, pocketsized formats to extensive fields, which he draws in the desert sands. Hence, Mack is also considered one of the proponents of “Land Art”, which has established itself since the late 1960s, when it emerged as a reaction to the expansion of our horizons through space travel. The exhibition shows works from all the artist‟s creative phases and was developed in close cooperation with Heinz Mack.

In addition to his participation in documenta II (1959) and documenta III (1964), Mack also represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1970. That same year, he was also given a professorship with teaching assignment in Osaka (Japan) and became a regular member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, to which he belonged until 1992. It was in 2014 that his monumental gold steles, eight metres high and decorated with more than 850,000 golden mosaic stones, came to prominence on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore as part of the Architecture Biennial in Venice. In October 2014, a major ZERO exhibition was opened in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The same exhibition is also scheduled to go on show at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2015. Heinz Mack lives in Mönchengladbach and Ibiza.

At the same time, the Museum Frieder Burda presents a cabinet exhibition on the artists„group ZERO. The movement, founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene in 1957/58, and whose nucleus also included Günther Uecker from 1961, developed optimistic visions and innovative concepts for transcending traditional categories and techniques. Unusual materials such as synthetic resin, aluminium, glass and nails were arranged as monochrome objects; fire was used as a sculptural means for vibrating smoke images and reflective surfaces were transformed into visual experiences. In addition to dynamic visual techniques such as grids, structures, arrangement and rhythm, light and movement became essential design elements. Other associates and participants of international ZERO exhibitions including Adolf Luther and Christian Megert are also presented.

Furthermore, the exhibition displays works by Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein, who were not only a vital source of ideas for the ZERO group, but also for the next generation of artists. Other examples of this generation featured at the show are works by Gerhard Richter, Imi Knoebel and Günther Förg. Apart from some prestigious works on loan from private collections, all of the exhibits come from the portfolio of the Museum Frieder Burda.