About the work
The starting point for the art of Heinz Mack is light. The artist refers again and again to precisely this in conversations about the colours defining his work. His primary attention is directed to the examination of colour and its impact. This nearly scientific interest also corresponds with Mack’s decision in favour of a composition oriented more to structures than to compositions. A painting that prefers a structural layout to a compositional one consists logically of kindred elements. In individual cases, the colour areas in the work from 2013 presented here, for example, generate only minor meaning-related content. The meaning is only revealed to the viewer through the manner of consolidation. Often, as is the case here, painting that is borne by the thought of non-relationality resorts to symmetries. This artistic approach, in which references external to the painting are dispensed with, was shaped in the 1950s by the American artist Frank Stella.though Mack frees himself from compositional traditions, the aesthetic category of beauty remains of absolute importance to him. The theme here is the continuum of colour light. Here, however, unlike in the colour chromaticisms that arose as of the 1960s, it is no longer the transitions, the nuances between the individual colours that are of importance. The work shown here belongs to the group of works to which Mack dedicated the overall title Chromatische Konstellationen (Chromatic Constellations). The finding of a title has a conceptual character but refers on the one hand directly to the Farbchromatiken (Colour Chromatics), in which Mack followed the colours of the rainbow, while it at the same time becomes clear that he here goes beyond the continuum of the rainbow.
Text authored and provided by Dr Andrea Fink, art historian
The art historian, curator and freelance publicist Andrea Fink studied art history, cultural studies and humanities, modern history and philosophy in Bochum and Vienna. Doctorate in 2007 on the work of the Scottish artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. As a freelance curator and art consultant, her clients include, among others, the Kunstverein (art association) Ahlen, Kunstverein Soest, Wella Museum, Museum am Ostwall Dortmund, ThyssenKrupp AG, Kulturstiftung Ruhr, Osthaus Museum Hagen, Franz Haniel GmbH, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria.
