About the work
This Farbchromatik 3321 seems as if illuminated by an inner light. Light is first and foremost an aesthetic category for Heinz Mack: “The quality of light”, according to Heinz Mack, “its beauty, is essentially a pure value of perception, thus a creative act of freedom within the sphere of our sensibility.”(1)
The light in Mack’s Colour Chromaticisms appears through the various spectral colours. Here, besides red, the other spectral colours (orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) also appear in a delicate application of colour with a clear internal structure. The work concludes directly at the top and bottom edges with an intensive blue or a brilliant orange. Part of the paper remains unprocessed toward the sides. This pictorial breakdown suggests that the vertical flow of colour might continue conceptually outside of the work from the top and bottom. The work thus renders an excerpt of something larger, might possibly even be interpreted as a kind of “window to the world”. Whereby, here it is not the world of material objects that is meant, but instead that of transcendent phenomena. In any case, the focus of artistic creation is here on the vertical as a connection of bottom and top, or even of earth and heaven.
1 Heinz Mack, „Licht ist nicht Licht“, in: Mack – Licht, Light, Lumière, ed. Helmut Friedell, Munich 2018, pp. 8–10, here p. 8.
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.
