Mack Reflected: Expanding the Zero Code

An examination of Heinz Mack’s art and its applicability to today’s most relevant climate science discussions.

A particular quality of Heinz Mack’s art is its relevance regarding questions of our time. Employing works from all creative periods, the book examines Mack’s relationship to technology, science, and nature while offering a look at how he engages with the present-day challenges of the transformation of technology or the climate catastrophe.

Mack was always far ahead of his time. His reflector walls and plantations of lamellae, devised sixty-five years ago, anticipate present-day photovoltaic installations. His study of air, water, light, and sand helps to reflect the acute threat to natural resources. While the artist saw desert landscapes as empty free spaces for his Land Art, today the Arctic and the Sahara symbolize climate change and the destruction of nature. This multifaceted far-seeing publication shows Heinz Mack as an artist of the twenty-first century.

Alistair Hudson is a curator who works internationally and is the artistic head of research at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany.