Celebrating the 85th birthday of Light Art pioneer and ZERO group founder Heinz Mack, ARNDT Singapore is presenting its part of a three-gallery retrospective. “Mack: Review and Outlook” is being exhibited across ARNDT Singapore and Berlin, as well as at Samuelis Baumgarte, in Bielefeld, Germany. The shows – also reported by BLOUIN Artinfo Germany - display pieces from a six-decade career in which Mack was among the first to embrace Op, Light, and Kinetic Art. Perhaps his most significant contribution is his founding of the ZERO Movement with Otto Piene and Günther Uecker. A loosely organized group, active from 1957 until 1966, they aimed to create work at odds with the idea of the importance of the unique imprint of the single artist that was fashionable with Jackson Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists, as well Tachisme and Art Informel in Europe. Instead, the ZERO artists put the focus on the materials of art. In the case of much of Mack’s work, this meant working with light and space in his more sculptural and kinetic works like the light cubes, and color and brushstrokes in his works on paper and canvas.The ARNDT Singapore section of “Review and Outlook” focuses on the latter, his paintings, collages, works on paper and reliefs. In recent years, these works have been mostly acrylic on canvas, with abstract constructions or patterns featuring prominently in many works. Earlier work, from his days in the ZERO group and just after it became inactive, belies the movement’s focus on materials, with reliefs like “Gold-Sand-Relief,” 1970, composed of sand and bronze pigment set in resin.These works, and those in the two German galleries this exhibition is in partnership with, highlight the influence Mack and his movement have had - an importance that began to be reevaluated following a group of ZERO works selling for well past their estimates at a 2010 Sotheby’s sale.Lawrence Alloway, a critic who was the first to use the phrase “Pop Art,” called the ZERO movement “the first artists’ collaboration devoted to topics of light and movement,” and this exhibition highlights this and the other ways the artist has been an influence on today’s art.“Mack: Review and Outlook” runs until April 30 at ARNDT Singapore.
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