Michael Heizer at Gagosian Gallery, Le Bourget
Gagosian is pleased to present works by Michael Heizer, dating from 1968 to the present.
Over fifty years, Heizer has redefined the very idea of sculpture in his explorations of size, mass, and process. His earth-moving constructions, paintings, and drawings explore the dynamics of positive and negative space.
October 16 — February 2, 2019
Gagosian Gallery
26 avenue de l’Europe, Le Bourget (Paris)
As a young artist in New York in the 1960s, Heizer began making “displacement paintings,” geometric canvases in light and dark tones. In the winter of 1967, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, he excavated several chasms in the earth, adapting the New York paintings to three dimensions. These “un-sculptures,” or “sculptures in reverse,” became the basis of a new sculptural vocabulary, as Heizer began using the land, and its removal, as his media.
“When I made the negative sculptures I realized the possibility of an entire vocabulary, making sculptures with basic materials such as earth. I felt that the areas of drawing and painting should also be enveloped so as to expose the whole vocabulary.”
—Michael Heizer
All images courtesy of Gagosian
