Solo exhibition from 16th of September 2023 until 07th of April 2024

Mirror objects in the glaring desert sun, shimmering color prisms in the Arctic, light-reflecting stelae, magically vibrating rotors, gold and silver gleaming cubes, virtual volumes generated by electrical impulses: Heinz Mack, artist of light, makes ZKM‘s Lichthöfe 8 and 9 glow in a variety of ways.

The exhibition “Mack at the ZKM” presents barely-known works from all creative phases of the artist. Some works, which have rarely been exhibited so far and some of which have even been lost, are now reconstructed or restaged at the ZKM. Among them, for example, is the “Light Choreography,” a composition of various works by Mack, some of them motorized, presented for the first time in this way, which creates a multisensory, immersive experience that sets light and space in vibration and literally makes them dance. Space and time also seem to dissolve in the “Sahara Project,” which has been a fixed point in Mack’s work since 1959 and made him a pioneer of Land Art in Europe. Time and again, the artist traveled to the desert, which, thanks to its boundless expanse, offered ideal conditions for bringing light into manifestation in its purest form. On a large sand surface that almost fills the Lichthof 9, the light phenomena that arise from the interplay of Mack’s light objects and the glistening desert sun can also be experienced in a museum context. The “Sahara Project” is also one of the first works in European art to be conceived in terms of media, as Mack’s interventions only lasted for the time of the photographs and were then made accessible to the public photographically and in the film “Tele-Mack”.