Heinz Mack - What is, for me, a sculpture?
I don't have any theories; I have ideas, which I take with me into the studio.
My sculptures have to mean at first, that which they are.
My works only "live" when they have "their" light, the "right" light, because they are objects of light, instruments of light and an expression of light's energy. In this way my new works whose materials are granite or marble are resistors of light and defenders of shadow. They can just as well be an expression of energy such as the works made from metal from whose shiny skin light is reflected.
Crystalline stones can take the place of the polished metal because my ideas are not dependent on one single material.
Sometimes I am truly desperate because so much touches me, influences and distracts me; but it has always been light which has fascinated me - and - to be precise - the dreams which one dreams when light combines with materials.
- Glance into the artist's sculpture garden Huppertzhof in Mönchengladbach
Rodin's Verdict: Sculpture is the art of knobs and holes; the art of presenting forms together in a game between light and shadow; Brancusi negated the holes, Moore made them positive. For me personally the second half of the sentence is particularly true: it is light, in which we live - and therefore every sculpture without light is only dead material.
What greatly impressed me as I entered Brancusi's atelier in 1957, were the relationships between the simple material itself and the volumes and the rhythm of these volumes.
Rhythm is like a cardiograph of our heartbeat; - whereas the proportions and the ponderations of masses and volumes correspond with the intuitive ability of our eyes to size things up.
From my earliest childhood for example steps and stairs have fascinated me because the physical feeling and the rhythm combined into one experience which expanded from step to step, up to exhaustion.
The more succinct, strong or monumental the basic form of a relief or a sculpture is, the more differentiated and complicated but also more carefully and cautiously I invest in discoveries, inventions, fantasy and ideas in this basic form. My love of Euclidian, i.e. simple, strict forms, allows me to set them out into nature because they can compete better in the complicated world of forms that nature provides.
Structure is an internal arrangement of simple and complex relationships which appear in the form of rhythms. The appearance of these relationships is in this case the form. Such relationships exist between body and space, light and shadow, calm and movement. They can be experienced with the sense of sight (I do not make any objects which can be felt). This "seeing" has to be both sensual and cognitive and it has to have a dynamic quality to be able to represent the kinetic light volume of the sculpture, and last but not least the sensation which the rhythms induce has a strong sensual quality.
I cannot separate the surrounding space from the sculpture. If I set up a sculpture in a space - be it an interior one or an exterior one - its appearance will be different each time. Ideally a certain space, a certain light, a certain sculpture and a certain viewer will come together; this seems a natural course, but it is not.
Because my sculptures - like natural phenomena - search out their space and light, they find a natural cohabitation with nature; they can live in her because they themselves are an expression of energy and movement, have their own volume, their own rhythm and are not trying to imitate Nature.
The dynamic relationship between expansion and gravitation, which some of my works - especially the stone sculptures - show, rests on the dynamic intervention between base earth and the space of air, whereby I have observed that space, the further it gets away from the earth, becomes lighter. That is why the sculptures have a different being near the ground than they do in the realms of air.
A monumental sculpture does not gain its inner dimensions through the number of centimetres it has over and above the size of a human and therefore makes the human seem "small".
The monumentality of a sculpture is a measure of inner fantasy, of pure imagination - this causes the human to have a sensation of greatness which raises him above his own smallness.
Time and again I am astonished at how easily nature accepts my sculptures. The transformation, and the alienation caused by it, which takes place when I give my sculptures up to open spaces reaches a special intensity in desert areas, against the heavens and on the infinite surface of the sea. In the ideal situation a "pure vision" will ensue in which I loose all the chains of critical thinking and become completely free. In this space all my dreams become reality. They just do not happen in museums or galleries because there space is not free. I prefer the space of free nature. Space in the museums is artificial space.
All admiration for an interest in nature is forgotten though when I am working in my studio. That is why I am even more surprised that that which I have discovered and developed for and from myself and made visible often has a very related form and structure to those we find in nature..
This obvious selective relationship is not sought by me; it arises of its own accord.
The older I become the better I understand that it is not art which is the wonder, but human beings as a part of nature.
Everyone can see that with eyes wide open, if these are not only the windows to his imagination, rather mirrors of pure vision, which in itself is a reflection of pure imagination.
This imagination - the idea - is deeply enclosed within an artist, more or less existent already, before it sees the light of day.
For me the power of vision is much stronger than that of the power of thought.
Maybe all art is pure vision and therefore close to God.
This is one of the most wonderful things about light; it makes the smallest and the largest things in the universe equally visible.
The secrets, the mysteries, the wonders revealed through art are shown on its surface.
That which is hidden beneath, is hidden beneath the surface. If the surface is destroyed the secret is destroyed - that is the sadness in the face of a damaged , destroyed beauty.
I don't know any material now which I prefer more than others; - except maybe when an idea is tied to a particular material.
There are ideas however which mutate as soon as the material itself changes.
But even that provides food for thought, when I think about St. Bernard de Clairvaux who - almost 1000 years ago - answered the question of "What is God?" with the reply "Height, Width, Depth."
(Excerpts from the foreword of the exhibition catalogue Mack-Skulpturen und Malerei, Galerie Lauter, 1992)
