Heinz Mack will celebrate his 85th birthday on March 8 while a major new exhibition of his work is on display in Istanbul's Sakıp Sabancı Museum. Mack is the leading master of the German modernist movement ZERO and will also celebrate the 60th anniversary of his career in 2016."My first meeting with Heinz Mack took place when his 'The Sky Over Nine Columns' was shown for the first time on the quay of the Church of San Giorgio di Maggiore on the bank of the Grand Canal in Venice," Dr. Nazan Ölçer, director of Sakıp Sabancı Museum, explains in the exhibition catalogue. "Mack explained that he had produced this work 'to exhibit in places where the civilizations of East and West meet,' and after Venice we were able to bring this work to Istanbul, a city that has met this condition over its long history, to our museum on the shore of the Bosporus.""MACK. Just Light and Color," running until July 17, is the perfect title for an exhibition where visitors are dazzled by the movement of light in the museum galleries and moved by the use of color of a bold artist. "The darkest point of the night reminds us of its bright sister, namely, light," Heinz Mack is quoted as saying in the gallery. "Taking my experiences as an artist as my starting point, I cannot imagine any creative endeavor without light; in the absence of form, light is merely brightness, just as there is no color without light." The centerpiece of the exhibition is "The Sky Over Nine Columns," a construction of composite and platform in steel that overlooks the Bosporus just outside the entrance of the museum. "This is the culmination of years in the quest of the standing stones erected by people in every period of history and in every region, as if all faiths were speaking with a single voice, bringing a magnificent interpretation to them," Ölçer explains. "From the moment it was unveiled in Istanbul, visitors to the museum began circling around it, almost as if circling around the Kaaba, so I am in so I have no doubt that this exhibition, too, will arouse similar interest."Born in 1931 in Lollar, Mack studied art in Düsseldorf where he curated special art events with fellow artist Otto Piene. "Great artists have certainly impressed me a lot and then influenced me as well when I was very young," Mack told Turkish curator Beral Madra in an interview for the exhibition catalogue. "A few years after I left art school, around 1956, I made an effort to forget everything that I had successfully learned until then." Mack was depressed and confronted with the question of what was not yet discovered - not yet realized - in the arts."Finally, finally, finally, the finest hour of my joy in discovery arrived, when I spotted that light had a quality to it that has accompanied my artistic work till today: It is the essence of light to dematerialize material and to alleviate gravity. Herewith, we were endowed with a visual gift, which finds its correspondence in the lucidity and lightness of thought."Together with Günther Uecker, Mack and Piene formed the modernist artistic group ZERO whose participants included Piero Manzoni and Yves Klein. Wandering through Mack's works last week in Emirgan, I was reminded of Klein's famous deep blue hue whose intensity seems reflected in acrylic on canvas works like "Parade of Colors" and "Flight Schedule (Chromatic Constellation)." The first section of "MACK. Just Light and Color" where I was surprised by such works as "Small Pavilion for the Colors," a 2000 work made from acrylic and wood, is devoted to such bold explorations of color and form."When we talk about painting, we talk about color," is how Mack explains the foundations of his work. After working on sculpture and form over a period of 30 years, Mack came up with "Chromatic Constellations" where he explored colors born of light. "Mack orchestrates the harmonious relationship between the prismatic colors in his canvasses as if they are a rhythmic musical sequence, all the while opening himself a new, infinite area of artistic production in which he exchanges light and colors for the unconquerable darkness that he claims to lie behind art," according to the exhibition curator.While working with his colleague and friend Normal Rosenthal, Ölçer found it extremely difficult to make a selection from the numberless works they encountered during their visit to Mack's studio in Monchengladbach. "In the extraordinarily enjoyable spaces of the large 17th century farmhouse, we listened to the artist telling the stories of his works. In the company of his wife and closest colleague Ute Mack, his daughter Valeria and his archivists, who are all art historians, we felt at home in the warm family atmosphere as we were transported back and forth to different eras and different regions," Ölçer remembers.The last section of the exhibition is devoted to Mack's kinetic works: A room filled with works that combine materials like wood, electrical accessories and special lenses to be able to focus on the movement of light. "Light is the aura that frames the objectivity of matter and its surface like a dress and over-frames and therefore dematerializes it," Mack says. "The emanation of light can lift in its happiest moments the conflict-laden drama of our consciousness and does so in a dialectical sense. The German word 'Aufheben' has a dual meaning, to do away with, lift something, but to keep in memory.""MACK. Just Light and Color" seems like the perfect gift for this master artist. "In wishing him many more healthy and productive years, we express our respect for his major contributions to the art world, and thank him in advance for further exhibitions in which he will present us with new works and interpretations," Ölçer says.