Mack color tower
The “Color Tower” by sculptor and painter Heinz Mack was created in 2017 as part of the exhibition “Deeds of Light – Mack & Goethe” at the Goethe Museum in Düsseldorf, before this sculpture found its final location in front of the newly founded Textile Academy in Mönchengladbach in September 2018.
The work consists of 12 colorful strips of fabric moved by the wind, which are framed in a ladder-like 9-meter-high stainless steel construction. The flags were developed for this project in a very elaborate process in cooperation between the artist and the Mönchengladbach-based company AUNDE Group. The fabric specially designed for the work is both water-repellent and so lightfast that the sun does not fade the color of the flags.
As a striking eye-catcher for the ZERO exhibition at the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp in 1979, Heinz Mack had a pole with colored flags erected in front of a museum entrance for the first time. While the colored flags remained largely motionless at that time, they now move in the wind, so that the sculpture achieves a dynamic effect in addition to the luminous color power.
The color sequence corresponds – in a figurative sense – to that of the color spectrum and thus reflects Mack’s well-known play of colors. [1]
The material and content-related features of the sculpture are intensified by the extraordinary façade of the textile academy. The work and the architecture can hardly be thought of separately. There is a growing desire to enter the interior of the building in order to directly encounter visionary ideas – as they also characterize Mack’s oeuvre – or even to create them oneself.
[1] Cf. Steingießer, Barbara (ed.): Deeds of Light – Mack & Goethe. Hatje Cantz publishing house, Berlin, 2018.
Heinz Mack
The German sculptor and painter Heinz Mack was born in Lollar in 1931 and attended the Düsseldorf State Academy of Art from 1950 to 1953. He studied philosophy at the University of Cologne until 1956 and completed both courses with a state examination.
Over the past sixty years, Mack has created an extensive oeuvre, which is characterized in particular by the wide range of materials and techniques he uses. Heinz Mack’s artworks have been shown in more than 340 solo exhibitions and countless group exhibitions. His works are in the possession of over 140 public collections. Parallel to this, a large number of publications and catalogs have been produced, as well as other films documenting his work.
Mack lives and works in Mönchengladbach and Ibiza, where he constantly pursues his creative impulse.
AUNDE Group
Founded in 1899 as Achter & Ebels, the company specialized in the development and production of innovative textiles for the automotive industry as early as 1920.
The increasing globalization of the automotive industry led to the start of the internationalization of Achter und Ebels in 1982 and thus to the development from a single company to the AUNDE Group. The AUNDE Group has grown internationally under the aspect of ecological, economic and social sustainability along the entire value chain.
Today, it has more than 100 locations in 29 countries – always close to its customers. With the AUNDE, ISRINGHAUSEN and FEHRER brands, the AUNDE Group offers its partners excellence along the entire production chain from yarn to complete vehicle interiors.
Textiles for the color tower
- Fabric: recycled polyester
- Weight: 300 g/m²
- Dyeing: spinneret dyed
The flags in the color stele are made from a polyester fabric. The individual filaments in the yarn of the fabric are thinner than a hair and are produced by melting polyester granules and spinning them through very fine nozzles. Initially, the yarn is completely smooth, but was textured for the stele in order to come as close as possible to a textile cotton look.
Heinz Mack naturally knew exactly which colors would be suitable for his artwork. However, the colors Heinz Mack had in mind were not “off-the-shelf” colors, but highly sophisticated colors that also had to be weather-resistant, i.e. lightfast, due to their outdoor application.
After explaining what was technically possible, we were happy to accept the request for the desired textiles. However, thanks to our technique of working exclusively with spun-dyed yarns, we were optimistic that we would be able to meet these requirements. In the production of spun-dyed yarns, the color pigments are added directly to the threads during spinning so that the dye penetrates deep into the fibers. This method makes the yarns particularly wind and weather resistant.
It’s not often that we go to so much trouble for just a few meters of fabric. But as a Mönchengladbach-based company, we were keen to support Heinz Mack in realizing his unique work of art.