The nine golden steles that the German artist Heinz Mack created between 2012 and 2014 have already graced a number of spectacular locales. Standing seven-and-a-half meters tall, the artwork was exhibited on the occasion of the Biennale in Venice in 2014, in the sculpture park of the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul and at the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciènces in Valencia. Now it will be possible to see it in a natural setting for the first time.
The distinct geometric forms of the golden steles will form a sharp contrast to the coniferous forest, snow-covered pastures, the plain of the frozen lake of St. Moritz and the Alpine landscape of the Upper Engadin valley. Also, the appearance of the sculpture in the changing lights throughout the day is a sight to look forward to; the nine steles are covered in 850 000 light-reflecting gold leaf tesserae.
The location of the installation is close to the footpath around Lake St. Moritz, somewhat secluded from the village, and is only accessible by foot. This path is very popular, so that «The Sky Over Nine Columns» is certain to become a major attraction in the coming winter. The unveiling of the steles is scheduled for Saturday, December 10th, at 15:00. The artist will be present.
The journey of this exceptional large-scale sculpture to special locations throughout the world is an art project designed to continue for many years. It has been conceptualized and realized with the aid of the Ralph Dommermuth Stiftung Kunst und Kultur in collaboration with Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art. After Venice, Istanbul, Valencia and St. Moritz, the other stops being discussed include Vienna, Athens and London.
Photography
Pictures for editorial use can be downloaded free of charge from www.flickr.com/ninecolumns/
Invitation to the Media
The artist Heinz Mack, Ralph Dommermuth and Michael Beck will be available to the media on December 10th, the day of the unveiling, at 13:00. The media event will take place at the Meierei restaurant in St. Moritz. To receive details on the event, please register at ninecolumns@gartmann.biz before November 25, 2016.
Contact
The Sky Over Nine Columns in St. Moritz
Christian Gartmann | Media Service
ninecolumns@gartmann.biz | Tel +41 79 355 78 78
Beck & Eggeling - International Fine Art
Dr. Antonia Lehmann-Tolkmitt
antonia.lehmann-tolkmitt@beck-eggeling.de | Tel +49 211 4915 8929
The Installation
The installation «The Sky Over Nine Columns», which Heinz Mack created between 2012 and 2014, consists of nine steles, each more than seven meters high, with a light-reflecting surface comprised of more than 850,000 tesserae made of 24-carat gold leaf.
In conceiving the installation, Heinz Mack drew on a concept for Berlin's Pergamon Museum that has not yet been realized. It is based on a substantive examination of the Temple of Altintepe in Anatolia as well as temples in Egypt and the six pillars of the temple of the Queen of Sheba in Yemen. In the course of these researches, various underlying principles have become evident to Heinz Mack. The installation not merely emphasizes the intercultural connection between Orient and Occident, which plays an important role in the artist's entire oeuvre, through the referencing of historic temples alone, but also through the material of which the mosaic is composed.
Heinz Mack developed his own language of light and color in the 1950s and ranks among the leading representatives of kinetic art. «The Sky Over Nine Columns» refers to his concept of the «light stele», that was formulated and realized for the first time in the artist’s Sahara project in 1958. His artworks in public spaces - be it urban or in nature - are always conceptualized as objects of light: «Light is crucial to my art. When it comes to light, I want to go to the very limits of the possible.»
Heinz Mack
Heinz Mack was born in Lollar (Hesse, Germany) in 1931 and attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1950 to 1953. In 1956 he also completed his studies of philosophy at the University of Cologne. In 1958 he founded the ZERO group together with Otto Piene, and they were joined by Günther Uecker in 1961. With their events, exhibitions and manifests, ZERO gained great attention and rapidly developed into a worldwide movement. Above all, the artists utilized light and movement as a new form language to overcome the pessimism of the post-war years and to gain access to a more open world.
Heinz Mack participated in the Kassel documenta in 1964 and 1977. Together with three other artists, in 1970 he represented Germany at the 35th Venice Biennale. In 2001 Heinz Mack was honored with an extensive exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Teheran as the first Western artist to be shown there after the Islamic revolution.
Since his major retrospective at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2011, the interest in the art of Heinz Mack has increased enormously. In the major ZERO exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2014, he was represented by twenty-three works. Since then, his achievements have attracted international interest at ZERO exhibitions in Berlin, Amsterdam and Istanbul. Mack's artworks can be found in more than 130 public collections. A multitude of publications as well as two movies document his multimedia achievements. Heinz Mack lives and works in Mönchengladbach and on Ibiza.
10 December 2016 - March 2017
HEINZ MACK
THE SKY OVER NINE COLUMNS TRAVELS TO ST. MORITZ