N Nature

It is a great stroke of luck that so much material has survived from the ZERO op zee (ZERO on Sea) project, planned for 1966 but ultimately never realized.[i]

Newspaper articles[ii] advertising the project, which was initiated by the Dutch Internationale Galerij Orez (International Gallery Orez) as early as 1965, demonstrate just how serious the efforts were to use the Scheveningen pier and the surrounding coastline, sea, and airspace for an exhibition of contemporary art.

The large number of very concrete project sketches[iii] by the twenty-nine international ZERO artists[iv] who were invited illustrate how differently they handled the natural features of the envisaged exhibition location. While some scaled existing works to the local conditions, others created new works that made productive use of the natural forces at work in the unusual setting. They conceived works that remained closely connected to their previous ZERO art, but which at the same time reflected on the connection between art and nature. In particular, in addition to the designs by the Japanese artists, who were connected to the Gutai group, these included all the works by Hans Haacke (b. 1936), Heinz Mack (b. 1931), Otto Piene (1928–2014), and Günther Uecker (b. 1930). Like all the others, these four artists submitted individual designs, but there is one written project sketch in particular that stands out, which they submitted jointly.[v] Both the equal contribution list of their names at the top of the letter to Galerij Orez and the description of the proposal as “unsere ZERO=Praesentation” (“our ZERO presentation”)[vi] make it clear that the project by Haacke, Mack, Piene, and Uecker was an extraordinary collaboration.

How did this unique collaboration come about? And what was the connection between the Düsseldorf ZERO group and Hans Haacke, who today is primarily known as a Conceptual artist with a political dimension to his work?

[i] See the following primary texts on ZERO op zee: Caroline de Westenholz, “ZERO on Sea,” in Tiziana Caianiello and Mattijs Visser, eds., The Artist as Curator: Collaborative Initiatives in the International ZERO Movement 1957–1967 (Ghent, 2015), pp. 371–95; Ulrike Schmitt, Der Doppelaspekt von Materialität und Immaterialität in den Werken der ZERO-Künstler 1957–67, Ph.D. diss. (University of Cologne, 2013), pp. 163–70; Anette Kuhn, ZERO: Eine Avantgarde der sechziger Jahre (Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1991), pp. 85–86.

[ii] See, for example, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. nos. mkp.ZERO.1.II.237; mkp.ZERO.1.II.238.

[iii] Today they are held in the Municipal Archives of The Hague.

[iv] Armando, Bernard Aubertin, Hans Bischoffshausen, Stanley Brouwn, Gianni Colombo, Lucio Fontana, Hans Haacke, Jan Henderikse, Norio Imai, Kumiko Imanaka, Yves Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Heinz Mack, Tsuyoshi Maekawa, Christian Megert, Sadamasa Motonaga, Schuki Mukai, Saburo Murakami, Henk Peeters, Otto Piene, George Rickey, Werner Ruhnau, Shozo Shimamoto, Hans Sleutelaar, Ferdinand Spindel, Günther Uecker, Nanda Vigo, Toshio Yoshida, and Michio Yoshihara.

[v] Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, and Hans Haacke to the Internationale Galerie Orez, copy from Otto Piene to Heinz Mack, New York, August 23, 1965, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, mkp.ZERO.1.I.653.

[vi] Ibid.

Unlike Mack, Piene, and Uecker, Hans Haacke did not live in Düsseldorf in the late nineteen-fifties. Born in Cologne, he studied in Kassel, and he says he saw ZERO works for the first time in 1959 and was impressed by the novelty of this art, especially the use of light and shadow.[i] It was probably at the end of 1959 that Haacke contacted Piene for the first time, as evidenced by Haacke’s subsequent letter.[ii] His interest in the magazine ZERO was responded to positively[iii] by Piene just three days later, and Haacke’s request to visit him—“If I’m ever in the Düsseldorf area, I’d like to come and visit you, if that’s all right with you”[iv]—must also have met with a sympathetic response. This initial contact led to a lively correspondence from 1961 to 1965; letters between Haacke and Mack have also been preserved.

The art scene in the USA is an important topic in their letters. Haacke had already got to know the USA in 1961, when he went there as a scholarship holder; afterwards, he had moved back temporarily to a studio in Cologne in 1963, before emigrating to the United States permanently in 1965. From the mid-nineteen-sixties at the latest, exhibitions and extended or long-term work stays took the artists of the Düsseldorf ZERO group abroad. And so Haacke and Piene exchanged ideas about the shared basis of their approach to art (“To my knowledge, ZERO has not yet reached New York”;[v] “I have found a few people who sympathize with our ideas—even before I met them”[vi]), reported on exhibitions that their colleagues had been unable to attend in person,[vii] and arranged contacts and exhibition opportunities for each other.[viii]

That Haacke’s artistic interests were closely linked to those of the ZERO artists is apparent from his early works. Ce n’est pas la Voie lactée (This Is Not the Milky Way), of 1960, for example, is executed in a canvas-filling, vibrating, all-over painting style that chimes with ZERO’s partiality for “grid structures, new materials, new techniques, and the fundamental renunciation of handwriting.”[ix] Les Couloirs de Marienbad(The Corridors of Marienbad), of 1962, is an acrylic glass panel with a regular pattern of nubs that is duplicated by a mirror underneath. The artist’s obvious interest in light and shadow, reflection and dynamics, which are largely dependent on the movements of the viewer, is also in line with the artistic objectives of ZERO.

There are striking formal parallels in the works of Haacke and Mack, for example, in the Silberreliefs (Silver Reliefs).[x] In 1965, Haacke also noticed that there were similarities in their plexiglass works, so he contacted Mack in order to counteract in advance any suspicions that the one had copied something from the other.[xi] The Condensation Cubes created by Haacke in 1963 are rectangular plexiglass containers in various formats, which contain water; this gives rise to a never-ending cycle of evaporation and condensation. The fine veil of droplets that condenses on the boxes’ transparent surfaces gives the simple and rather cool character of the work a poetic structure.

And at first glance, Mack’s Licht, Regen, Schatten (Light, Rain, Shadow)[xii] is very similar. However, Mack’s acrylic glass cube has an electric heating plate underneath, which constitutes a significant difference because the heat drives the condensation process constantly and evenly. By contrast, Haacke’s “water boxes” are subject to natural accelerations and decelerations of this process, due to external fluctuations in the environment, such as room temperature, number of people in the room, and so on. Last but not least, the silver base of Mack’s cube clearly places it within the cosmos of his oeuvre.

The fact that Haacke exhibited together with the ZERO artists on ten occasions between 1962 and 1965, and thus participated in important group shows, such as Nul (1962) at the Stedilijk Museum, Amsterdam, or in 1963 at the Halfmannshof, Gelsenkirchen, firmly locates him within the active ZERO network at this time.[xiii] How the collaboration between the four artists for the ZERO op zee project actually came about, however, cannot be verified precisely today.

What is certain is that together they proposed seventeen numbered projects and that these cannot be definitively assigned to any individual artist’s oeuvre. The ideas range from the spectacular (such as no. 9, “Revue with ZERO cabaret acts”; no. 10, a sort of “guard” in costume—a traditional feature of German carnival; and no. 12, “Fireworks”) to participatory actions (no. 4, “ZERO messages-in-bottles,” and no. 5, “Kaleidoscopes”). These are complemented by ideas for projects that play out on the sea (for example, no. 7, “Silver skin on the sea”; no. 13, “Fountains in the sea,” using circulation pumps; and no. 3, “Buoys”) and in the air (no. 14, “Smoke sculptures”; and no. 2, “A black cloud of steam”); these would have been clearly visible from the coast. Movement, driven by different aggregate states of water and air, as well as the energy of waves and wind, were actively incorporated into these proposals.

A further approach, which would even have combined different types of movement—the movement of waves, boats, and, most importantly, the movement of living creatures, namely seagulls—is set out in the draft for project no. 6, “Seagull Island (Möweninsel).” According to the original plan, the project would have been realized as follows:

[i] Jürgen Wilhelm, ed., Piene im Gespräch (Munich, 2015), p. 45.

[ii] Hans Haacke to Otto Piene, Kassel, May 20, 1960, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO. 2.I.1067_1.

[iii] Otto Piene to Hans Haacke, Düsseldorf, May 23, 1960, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO. 2.I.1067_2.

[iv] Haacke to Piene, May 20, 1960 (see note 8).

[v] Hans Haacke to Otto Piene, Philadelphia, November 25, 1961, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1343_1.

[vi] Hans Haacke to Otto Piene, Philadelphia, September 8, 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1344.

[vii] Haacke told Mack about an exhibition in San Francisco. See Hans Haacke to Heinz Mack, Seattle, April 10, 1966, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.530_1.

[viii] Hans Haacke to Heinz Mack, Cologne, May 24, 1965, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.529.

[ix] Gabriele Hoffmann, Hans Haacke: Art into Society—Society into Art (Weimar, 2011), p. 11.

[x] Compare Hans Haacke, A7-61 (1961) and D6-61 (1961), with (besides many others) Heinz Mack, Silberregen (1959), in Dieter Honisch, Mack: Skulpturen 1953–1986 (Düsseldorf, 1986), work 511, p. 158. See also Luke Skrebowski, “Jack Burnham, ZERO, and Art from Field to System,” in Tiziana Caianiello and Barbara Könches, eds., Between the Viewer and the Work: Encounters in Space(Heidelberg, 2019), pp. 65, 67, https://books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/arthistoricum/catalog/book/541 (accessed November 27, 2023). Skrebowski positions Haacke’s A7-61 (1961) next to Mack’s Lamellae-Relief (1959–60).

[xi] Hans Haacke to Heinz Mack, Cologne, July 20, 1965, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.529.

[xii] This work is dated 1962. See Honisch 1986 (see note 16), work 182, p. 158.

[xiii] The exhibition Group Zero, organized by Otto Piene at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in 1964, is an important example, because it resulted in further invitations to participate in US exhibitions for Haacke and others. See https://icaphila.org/exhibitions/group-zero/ (accessed November 24, 2023).

Echoes of this idea are found in the individual biographies of Haacke’s works more frequently than any other.

Two years later, in 1968, on the basis of his reflections connected with ZERO op zee, Haacke created Lebendes Flugsystem / Living Airborne System,[i] which is significant for his oeuvre as it is the first of several works featuring animals:

[i] Hans Haacke also realized the idea for “Messages-in-bottles,” project number four of the joint ZERO presentation, for the Places and Processes exhibition curated by Willoughby Sharp in Edmonton, Canada, in 1969. Haacke had numerous messages in bottles thrown into the North Saskatchewan River, with a request for feedback if they were found. For more details on this project see Willoughby Sharp, “Place and Process,” Artforum 8, no. 3 (November 1969), https://www.artforum.com/features/place-and-process-210698/ (accessed November 24, 2023).

Otto Piene was also still thinking about seagulls after 1966. In 1968, he planned The Birds Sculpture as part of the Boston Harbor Project, his fourteen-part project sketch[i] for which is preserved in the archive of the ZERO foundation.[ii] It is very similar to ZERO op zee project idea no. 6:

[i] Archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.IV.171.

[ii] For the context of the Boston Harbor Project—which, like ZERO op zee, was never realized—see the detailed studies in Blakinger 2019 (see note 27), pp. 365, 381. At the time, Boston Harbor was severely polluted; this attracted nationwide attention and led to discussions about environmental policy. The US Clean Water Act of 1972 was a consequence of this. Today, the Boston Harbor Projectrefers to a large-scale environmental project (1985–2001), which cleaned up the severe environmental pollution in the harbor that had been the subject of much debate since the nineteen-seventies.

Piene’s proposals for Boston Harbor are closely linked to his work at CAVS—the Center for Advanced Visual Studies—and above all with its founding director György Kepes. With this institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Kepes established an unprecedented combination of art and technology. Piene, who “during the ZERO era had already developed within this movement his concept of a symbiosis of nature—art—technology,”[i] fitted perfectly into this concept and, after many years of correspondence,[ii]Kepes finally managed to get Piene to come to CAVS as a fellow of the first generation, starting in 1968. For Kepes, close collaboration between artists and scientists was of primary importance. The 200th anniversary of the Siege of Boston in 1776 served as an opportunity to initiate far-reaching interdisciplinary collaboration.[iii] In this spirit, Piene’s project proposals for the Boston Harbor Project would have achieved their spectacular effects through enormous specialist know-how alone, as point no. 12 illustrates: “Nightly Display of Artificial Clouds.… I don’t know how to do it but I want to do it. Let’s ask the scientists.”

What all of Piene’s ideas have in common is that they are characterized by light and air; only the The Birds Sculpture quoted at the beginning stands out, because it would not have required any technological components. What does this say about Piene’s conception of nature, that the swarm sculpture nevertheless remained part of his vision?

A closer look at Piene’s oeuvre reveals that the ostensible opposition of belief in technology and in nature’s material actually constitutes his art. Both in the ZERO years up to 1966 and afterwards, two opposing directions are always apparent, which the artist seeks to reconcile.

Piene states:

[i] Anette Kuhn, “Otto Piene,” in Künstler: Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst (Munich, 1991), p. 3.

[ii] See György Kepes to Otto Piene, Massachusetts, November 23, 1965, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.2815; Otto Piene to György Kepes, New York, January 28, 1966, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.2817; György Kepes to Otto Piene, Massachusetts, February 1, 1966, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.2814; György Kepes to Otto Piene, Massachusetts, March 11, 1966, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.2819.

[iii] In Piene’s words: “Communal projects (such as Kepes’s starter project: ‘The Boston Harbor Project’—meant to be ‘Bicentennial’—a Denkmodell [thought model]) brought the individuals together in (sometimes ‘heated’) discussion.” See Otto Piene, “In Memoriam: György Kepes, 1906–2002,” Leonardo Electronic Almanac, August 4, 2011, https://www.leoalmanac.org/in-memoriam-gyorgy-kepes-1906-2002-by-otto-piene/ (accessed November 2, 2023).

However, his fire paintings (from the late nineteen-fifties onwards) demonstrate that the natural element of fire is not just represented, but is also an active “material” that coproduces the works. On the one hand, Piene is influenced by Yves Klein’s work and his view that nature is a medium conveying spirituality,[i] and on the other, in his use of fire, he hands over a certain artistic agency to the material—the power to act. Then, ultimately, he ties his works back to representational depictions through their titles, as exemplified by those that touch upon the world of plants.[ii]

Later, in his Sky Art, the symbolic forms of natural phenomena coalesce with Piene’s interest in their scientific foundations, and they are technically realized as inflatable sculptures, which results in poetic works such as his Regenbogen (Rainbow) inflatable, of 1972.[iii]

Although the Boston Harbor Project—like ZERO op zee before it—did not become a reality, a visual realization does actually exist. In the Sky Art portfolio (1969), a collection of twenty-five lithographs,[iv] Piene printed the texts of his project suggestions and illustrated them on the bottom half of sheet no. XX. With fine white strokes, he sketches a huge flame, an enormous beam of light, a vapor cloud of seawater, a tall mast on which sails flutter in the wind, as well as an artificial rainbow against a black background. The Birds Sculpture can be seen in the lower left-hand quarter of the sheet, depicted as a rather roundish swarm consisting of detached curves and hooks. These stylized seagulls form a loose yet coherent volume—albeit a fast-moving and fleeting one.

[i] See the unpublished MA thesis in the library of the ZERO foundation by Florence Macagno, ZERO entre Nature et Technologie (Université Paris IV La Sorbonne, 2011), p. 85.

[ii] One example among many is Otto Piene, Green Fire Flower I (1967), 48 x 68 cm. Piene also often refers to his circular, central fire marks on canvas as “eyes.”

[iii] See Barbara Könches, “On Rainbow by Otto Piene: A Sign of Hope in Orange, Yellow, Green, Indigo, and Violet,” in Anton Biebl and Elisabeth Hartung, eds., Art and Society 1972–2022–2072 (Berlin, 2023), pp. 138–49.

[iv] Otto Piene, Sky Art (1969), collection of the ZERO foundation, Düsseldorf, donated by Otto Piene and Elizabeth Goldring, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2014.15. According to Ante Glibota, Sky Art is “the natural consequence of Piene‘s invention of this art genre and his intensive exploration of its characteristics and possibilities. The portfolio is thus divided into three parts: items that familiarize us with … Sky Art; illustrations and interpretations of already realized aerial projects; and finally those that refer to potential or future events with plans and projects.” For further information see Ante Glibota, Otto Piene (Paris, 2011), pp. 617, 628. See also Blakinger 2019 (see note 27), pp. 346, 350.

Günther Uecker certainly did not encounter the natural phenomenon of a flock of seagulls for the first time in connection with ZERO op zee; he grew up on the Wustrow peninsula in the Baltic Sea.[i] In 1970, seagulls were the subject of two of his filmic works.[ii]

In Möweninsel (Seagull Island),[iii] the camera focuses on a hill on which a large colony of seagulls are nesting. The distant birds look like the heads of nails that have been hammered irregularly into a plate. In Schwebend schweben (Hover Hovering)[iv] we see a flock of seagulls on the wing. The typical hook shape of the beating wings stands out against the bright, monochrome sky.

The films look rather like sketches, and the additions “in motion” (in Bewegung) or “static” (statisch) to their titles indicate that the two films are conceived as contrasting each other. The subtitle of Möweninsel (Seagull Island) also makes it clear that its original idea derives from ZERO op zee. Both these films are in the context of several short films made the same year, which use a strong black-and-white contrast to explore everyday phenomena experimentally with the camera, such as a repeatedly slamming door (Lichtspalt [Chink of Light]. Banging Door) or a view of the landscape (Hochmoor [Upland Moor]). According to Sigrid Wollmeiner, the productive peak of Uecker’s cinematic work in 1970 coincided with his engagement with nature.[v] In her understanding, the films are “actions in and with nature in the figurative sense.… Nature takes the lead role within the framework set by the artist and presents itself.”[vi] The films can therefore be assigned to the category of “accentuation of sections of nature”—one of three focuses that Wollmeiner has educed for Uecker’s nature-related works.[vii] Besides Uecker’s films, his collaboration with Jef Verheyen on the Vlaamse Landschappen (Flemish Landscapes) project in 1967 is a good example of this. The installation of white frames, taller than a human, in the landscape around the small Belgian town of Mullem can be interpreted as a commentary on the aesthetic category of “landscape,” which only ever exists as a subjectively realized excerpt of the perception of nature.

Central to Uecker’s relationship to nature after his ZERO years is the fact that he worked predominantly on artistic actions, both in the museum and outdoors. These action-based works are accompanied by media communicating them: film, photography, and texts (the Uecker Zeitung newspaper).

Repeatedly and demonstratively, Günther Uecker situates his own person (and thus, by extension, humans and their subjective perception) at the center of his relationship with nature. His works reflect humankind’s actions on and with nature, and can be seen as establishing contact, which derives from the ZERO idea of bringing the relationship between humankind and nature back into harmony.[viii] In Uecker’s understanding, humanity is not in opposition to nature, but does not coexist smoothly with it either. As Xiao Xiao has recently pointed out, as well as Sigrid Wollmeiner, Uecker’s warning about the destruction of nature is a very important subject for him.[ix]

With regard to his action Nagelfeldzug (Nail Campaign), of 1969, in which the camera accompanies the artist as he nails up an area or objects in urban spaces, Uecker sees the nails in this work as an “ambivalent sign of creating order, but also the aggressive and destructive intervention of humankind in nature.”[x]

Uecker’s art visualizes how humankind leaves its marks on the “earth,” exemplified in the simple action, captured on film, with the descriptive title Gehen über Schnee (Walking on Snow), of 1969.

In his Sandmühlen (Sand Mills)[xi], which he worked on from 1965, electronically driven apparatus incessantly plows through sand using strings, only to obliterate these traces again shortly afterwards. Here as elsewhere, the question of how to deal with interventions in nature in the future resonates in Uecker’s work.

Uecker and his colleagues were fascinated by light as an immaterial natural phenomenon during the ZERO period, and, afterwards, more and more concrete natural materials were added. Stones, string, wood (often in its “natural” state—that is, unworked wood like a tree trunk or branch), ashes, sand, and soil became and remained important natural materials for him, including for his sculptural and canvas-based works.

[i] See Dieter Honisch, Günther Uecker (Stuttgart, 1983), p. 8. The publication includes a photograph showing the view from his parents‘ house; readily noticeable are the seagulls sitting on the groynes.

[ii] The descriptions refer to prints taken from film stock. A comprehensive, well-founded analysis of Uecker‘s cinematic work is still pending.

[iii] See Honisch 1983 (see note 39): Günther Uecker, Möweninsel, 1970: Zero on Sea, 1965, Möwenskulptur statisch (1970). 16 mm film, black/white, 3 min.

[iv] See Honisch 1983 (see note 39): Günther Uecker, Schwebend schweben, 1970, Möwenskulptur in Bewegung (1970). 16 mm film, black/white, 3 min.

[v] Sigrid Wollmeiner, “Land-Art oder Natur-Kunst? Günther Ueckers Auseinandersetzung mit der Natur und ihrem Material,” in Klaus Gereon Beuckers, ed., Günther Uecker: Die Aktionen (Petersberg, 2004), p. 129.

[vi] Ibid., p. 129.

[vii] As a further focus, she says that Uecker‘s nature-oriented works make the viewer aware of a “relationship that exploits and destroys nature,” in order ultimately “to surrender to nature” in and with his works. See ibid., p. 129. These cannot be clearly separated.

[viii] Otto Piene formulated this for ZERO as follows: “One of our most important intentions was to reharmonize the relationship between humans and nature—we see in nature possibilities and stimuli, the effects of the elements and their material form: sky, sea, the Arctic, deserts; air, light, water, fire as creative media; the artist is not a refugee from the ‘modern world,’ no, the artist uses new technical resources as well as the forces of nature.” Otto Piene, quoted in Dirk Pörschmann and Margriet Schavemaker, eds., ZERO: Die internationale Kunstbewegung der 50er und 60er Jahre (ZERO: The International Art Movement of the 1950s and 1960s), exh. cat. Martin-Gropius-Bau and Stedelijk Museum (Berlin, Amsterdam, and Cologne, 2015), p. 244.

[ix] See Xiao Xiao, Philosophie und Künste Ostasiens im Werk von Günther Uecker (Weilerswist-Metternich, 2023), pp 101–3. Further, Xiao sees themes of “destruction” both as a pictorial violation, as it were, and as the endangering of people by other people.

[x] Günther Uecker, quoted in Wollmeiner 2004 (see note 43), p. 127.

[xi] For example, Günther Uecker, Sandmühle (1970/2009), collection of the ZERO foundation, Düsseldorf, donated by Günther Uecker, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2008.69.

Heinz Mack was the only one of the four artists involved in the joint ZERO presentation for the ZERO op zeeproject who did not take up the idea of a seagull sculpture in later years.

Nevertheless, the seabirds also occupied him outside of the collaboration. In a letter to Henk Peeters, who was close to the Internationale Galerij Orez in The Hague, he took seagulls as a comparative image for constellations of works featuring sailing ships or buoys, which were intended to be artificial yet at the same time reminiscent of natural phenomena.[i] He later created works that can be linked to other ideas of the “ZERO presentation.” For example, Feuer im Wasser (Fire in the Water) (no. 1) can be compared to his Feuerschiffe (Fire Boats), which first appeared in the film Tele-Mack, of 1969.

Furthermore, no. 16, Fire Fighting Boat (“At the exhibition opening, the boat, while moving, shoots up jets of water into the air”), is comparable to Mack’s Wasserwolke (Water Cloud) for the 1972 Olympic Games, an enormous fountain on the Olympic Park Lake in Munich. A vertical fountain of water, the Water Beam,[ii] was also envisaged for Piene’s Boston Harbor Project. Both artworks are related to garden and landscape design, in which fountains have been a design feature in connection with water systems for centuries.

Mack sees the four natural elements, above all fire and water, as characteristic of many ZERO artists—including for his own art. Further, Mack views electricity, light, movement, and transparency as belonging equally to the “universals of nature, quasi-basic phenomena of nature.”[iii] Mack sees the last three in particular as “decisive … media for my work, or to be more precise, their integration is my artistic problem.”[iv]

Several of these universals of nature come together in the fountain installations created by Mack, such as Segelbrunnen (Three Sails Fountain), of 1988, in Düsseldorf. The motion of the translucent water is optically multiplied by the three polished stainless steel sails, and the natural fluidity of the water is enhanced by technical propulsion—pumps.

Basically—as Mack has said himself—his aim is to bring together nature and technology. He sees himself as an artist in both areas, which exist in a dialectical relationship with each other and which he wants to make interchangeable.[v]

[i] Ibid. The full quotation reads: “I am also thinking of abstract sailing ships, not necessarily large, floating in a circle of spherical buoys. They could also be abstract seagulls that have settled on the sea. Everything should be very artificial. It gets really exciting when you shine a spotlight on it at night.”

[ii] “All the pressure one can get for the tallest water beam ever, shooting vertically.” Project sketch, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.IV.171.

[iii] Unpublished text by Heinz Mack, available to the ZERO foundation, “Mein Verhältnis zur Natur: Ein Arbeitspapier von Heinz Mack” (“My Relationship to Nature: A Working Paper by Heinz Mack”), 2021, p. 1.

[iv] Herzogenrath 1973 (see note 22), p. 109.

[v] Ibid.

The example of the fountain or water feature, which illustrates how Mack handles natural materials, also refers to the relationship between natural spaces and human-made spaces, which is just as fundamental to Heinz Mack’s art. A garden results from the interface between “natural” and “artificial” nature, and is often evoked as a new perceptual space in the titles of Mack’s works and exhibitions, or explored as such by art historians.[i]The roots of this debate already lie in Mack’s important text on his Sahara Project, which he published in ZERO 3 in 1961. There he describes his project as “the idea of an artificial ‘garden’ in the Sahara.”[ii] When he installed his artworks in the Tunisian desert in 1968, he actually took the step out of the interiors of institutions, which many artists were striving for but had not yet taken, and as he had also planned to do in the ZERO op zee project. The objective was to “achieve an unparalleled appearance” of his own works within this novel natural environment and to “find a new freedom for art.”[iii]

Mack’s subsequent projects in the desert and the Arctic, in which his utopian and romanticizing relationship to the natural environment returns, bring with them experiences that he then takes back into the museum in two-dimensional works, for example in his monochrome Sand Reliefs.

[i] See, for example, Karin Thomas, “Gartenkünstlerische Aspekte bei Heinz Mack,” in Wieland Schmied, ed., Utopie und Wirklichkeit(Cologne, 1998), pp. 271–75.

[ii] Heinz Mack, “Das Sahara-Projekt” (1961), in Dirk Pörschmann and Mattijs Visser, eds., ZERO 4321 (Düsseldorf, 2012), n.p.

[iii] Ibid.

Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, and Günther Uecker had already organized the first open-air art events together as part of their two ZERO demonstrations in 1961 and 1962, which had regarded the natural environment as a constitutive element. In 1962, Mack, Piene, and Uecker designed installations that actively incorporated airspace and light in particular: balloons rising and brightly illuminated against the night sky; sails of fabric and aluminum fluttering in the wind; and reflecting Lichtfahnen (Light Flags). What is new at this point in the development of art is that increasingly the dynamic movements of the typical ZERO materials are derived from forces in nature. In 1966, the year in which the ZERO group finally disbanded, the ZERO op zee project marked a further augmentation of this openness toward nature.

The collaboration with Hans Haacke, who already from the beginning of the s was delving deeper and deeper into the biological and physical foundations of the natural materials he used, indicates that all the protagonists came together precisely because they saw paths for the future in intensifying their work with “nature.” A further illustration is the example of works that developed from the idea of a seagull sculpture, as traced above, albeit with different emphases: the question of the separability of nature and culture (Haacke); the integration of technical possibilities into the nature-culture relationship (Piene); the subjective perception of nature (Uecker); and the opening up of new spaces for perception within nature (Mack).

This text has been translated from German into English by Gloria Custance.