Structures of Energy

Cortesi Gallery presents HEINZ MACK. Structures of Energy. The exhibition opens Thursday, Oct. 27 from 6 to 8 p.m. and will be open to the public until the end of February 2023. Project curated by Francesca Pola and realized in collaboration with the Artist and Atelier Mack. 

Heinz Mack (Lollar, 1931) is a fundamental figure in the art of the second half of the 20th century: a radical and revolutionary artist, active since the 1950s in a key of continuous renewal. After the extensive and significant monographic exhibition dedicated to the artist in 2019, in which it was possible to retrace his entire creative iter, Cortesi Gallery presents a new Mack exhibition at its Milan venue, which on this occasion focuses mainly on works from the last decade of his activity. The exhibition, like the previous one, curated by Francesca Pola, in close collaboration with the artist and his studio: intends to pay special attention to Mack's recent activity, focusing on the dialectic of pure colors of his Chromatische Konstellationen (chromatic constellations), which layered in transparency or juxtaposed in juxtaposition, in counterpoint or gradation, articulate the spatialities of the surface in new, radiant harmonies. There we find that dynamic and active relationship between color, light, structure and space that constitutes the ideational core of these extraordinary structures of energy, both chromatic and physical. The exhibition itinerary is punctuated by a number of large-scale works, including the bursting scans of Parade of Colours (Chromatic Constellation), 2000, in dialogue with recent works directly from the artist's studio, including a selection of works on paper, which highlight the search for chromatic purity and transparency. A disruptive painting emerges, in which there is nothing naturalistic or descriptive, but rather an unfolding of the light spectrum as a distillation of thought and energy. In Mack's work, color is thought of as space and light, proceeding from white to black by intermediate degrees of oscillation, in works where everything is rhythm, a harmonic sequence of chromatic expansion in free sensuality and overwhelming luminosity. His goal is to make light itself emerge: in its physicality and autonomous reality, not as a vehicle of sensations or emotions. It is a painting overflowing with light, where the purity of color translates into continuous vibrations, also recalled by two works from the artist's early season exhibited here as indices of his early and fundamental research into the relationship between structure and vibration, making him one of the undisputed masters of his generation. The exhibition is also ideally connected to the artist's recent solo exhibition at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, Heinz Mack. Vibration of Light, Collateral Event of the 59. International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, where Mack's work was presented in a dialogue of profound art-historical significance with the wall paintings and ceiling tondi by masters of color and light such as Tintoretto, Veronese and Titian that enrich the Sansovinian Hall.