About the work
Heinz Mack has been working on his Chromatic Constellations since 1991. These works involve neither expressive colour statements nor any kind of self-expression of the artist whatsoever but are instead "experimental arrangements of the colour spectrum”(1).
Mack here fundamentally deals with the refraction of white light into the spectral colours. There are seven actual spectral colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. In purely physical terms, there are endless numbers of spectral colours, because the colour transitions from one colour to the next are fluid, whereby the human being is only capable of differentiating approximately 300 of them. The respective chromatic colours are clearly delimited from one another into individual colour fields in Mack’s works. The result is a rhythm that expresses the vibration and the dynamic of the variously represented colour gradations.
After Mack had already appointed light as the actual actor of his painting in his non-representational sculptures, the Colour Chromaticisms originated from the "observation, refraction and reflection of light on the canvas”(2) or on the paper. The colour grows thin and is applied onto the ground with seemingly gentle contact. This fine application, but also the materiality of the pastel chalk itself and the fibrous edges of the individual monochrome colour fields allow the colour to float in front of the paper, so to speak. The showing through of the ground intensifies the permeability and the lightness of the colours. The work appears as if backlit. In the Farbchromatik 2822, bands of colour in violet, rosé, green, blue, pink and dark blue progress around the two centrally placed colour fields in orange and yellow in a harmonious arrangement. Heinz Mack still finds his enduring incentive in the light of his adoptive home on Ibiza.
1 Robert Fleck, Antonia Lehmann-Tolkmitt, Heinz Mack. Ein Künstler des 21. Jahrhunderts, Munich 2019, p. 93.
2 Ibid., p. 94.
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.
