Heinz Mack The Light Within Structure

There are few spaces in Paris where light feels as purposeful as it does inside Maison La Roche. Designed by Le Corbusier as an essay in proportion, purity, and form, the house stands as a quiet temple to the modernist idea that architecture can choreograph the movement of light. It is within this setting that Heinz Mack’s latest solo exhibition finds its voice, a dialogue between art and space that reaches toward the ineffable.

Presented by Almine Rech and Fondation Le Corbusier, the exhibition brings together a selection of works created between 1995 and 2021, a period that reveals the artist’s continuous pursuit of transformation. Mack, born in Lollar in 1931, remains one of the defining figures of postwar art, a pioneer who helped reshape how light and colour are understood as materials rather than mere effects. His work, radical in its simplicity and endlessly experimental in its spirit, explores how vision itself is constructed.

The setting could not be more fitting. In Maison La Roche, the meeting of Mack’s canvases with Le Corbusier’s architecture creates a play of reflection and refraction that seems to dissolve the boundaries of each surface. What emerges is not a static exhibition but a living conversation between space, structure, and light.

Central to this display are Mack’s Chromatische Konstellationen, chromatic constellations that reveal a painter at the height of his control and freedom. In these works, colour is not applied as a gesture but composed like a piece of music, layered in transparency, juxtaposed in harmony, and graded with mathematical precision. Each composition becomes a meditation on rhythm and vibration, a visual language that speaks to both the physical and emotional dimensions of perception.

The chromatic constellations represent a turning point in Mack’s career, stemming from his transition in 1991 from monochrome explorations of light to a more vibrant engagement with colour. The artist has described this shift as a revelation, a recognition that colour could hold within it the same purity he once sought in white and black. It is in the liminal space between darkness and brightness that vision begins, and it is there that Mack’s art continues to evolve.

Purity remains the quiet thread that connects Mack’s visual world with Le Corbusier’s architectural philosophy. Both artists share a fascination with how structure and simplicity can evoke emotion. In this exhibition, that connection is not theoretical but tangible, each painting seems to echo the geometry of the house, while the architecture in turn becomes animated by the shifting light of Mack’s palette.

To stand within Maison La Roche during this exhibition is to witness the slow dance of illumination. The light that enters through the iconic ribbon windows does not simply fall upon Mack’s works, it becomes part of them. The colours respond, changing subtly with each passing hour, reminding the viewer that vision itself is an act of transformation.

Heinz Mack’s exhibition at Maison La Roche runs until 20 December 2025. It is a rare opportunity to see two artistic philosophies, one of paint and one of space, merge into a single expression of clarity, energy, and quiet transcendence.