Michael Heizer builds a world where subtraction is law.
Excavation defines boundary. The void becomes structural mass.
Scale regulates perception. Monument stabilizes through measured removal.
Structure persists through absence.
Michael Heizer builds a world where subtraction is law.
Excavation defines boundary. The void becomes structural mass.
Scale regulates perception. Monument stabilizes through measured removal.
Structure persists through absence.
In Heizer’s work, removal replaces composition. Material is displaced rather than modeled. The cut establishes boundary. The void defines mass.
Scale is not theatrical; it is relational. The body registers proportion through distance and drop rather than surface detail.
What appears as monument is in fact regulation. Geometry is embedded in excavation. Structure holds through calibrated absence.
The work does not represent landscape. It reorganizes it.
1. Portrait of Michael Heizer. Courtesy Gagosian.
2. Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969, two removals of 240,000 total tons of earth, rhyolite, and sandstone, 1,476 feet 4 ½ inches × 29 feet 6 ¼ inches × 49 feet 2 ½ inches (450 × 9 × 15 m), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; gift of Virginia Dwan; installed at Mormon Mesa, Overton, Nevada. Artwork © Michael Heizer. Photo © Michael Heizer.
3. Portrait of Michael Heizer. Photo © Gianfranco Gorgoni.
4. Michael Heizer, City, 2023. Artwork © Michael Heizer. Photo © Annie Leibovitz.
5. Michael Heizer, City, begun 1972. Artwork © Michael Heizer. Photo © Jamie Hawkesworth. Courtesy The New Yorker.
6. Installation view, Michael Heizer, Gagosian, New York, March 3–April 16, 2022. Artwork © Michael Heizer.
7. Michael Heizer, North, East, South, West, 1967/2002. Artwork © Michael Heizer. Photo © Adam Groffman.
8. Installation view with Michael Heizer, Cilia (1968–c. 1990). Artwork © Michael Heizer. Photo © Thomas Lannes.
9. Michael Heizer, Circular Surface Planar Displacement Drawing, El Mirage Dry Lake, 1969. Artwork © Michael Heizer. Photo © Gianfranco Gorgoni. Courtesy Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
10. Portrait of Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation.
11. Michael Heizer, Circular Surface Planar Displacement Drawing, 1969. Artwork © Michael Heizer. Photo from Avalanche No. 1, Fall 1970. © Kineticism Press, New York.
12. Michael Heizer, Megalith #5, 1998, diorite and steel, 15 feet 8 inches × 6 feet 6 inches × 2 feet 2 inches (4.8 × 2 × 0.7 m); extended loan, Menil Collection, Houston; gift of Mr. & Mrs. James A. Elkins, Jr. in honor of Dominique de Menil. Artwork © Michael Heizer. Photo © Bill Jacobson Studio, New York. Courtesy Dia Art Foundation, New York.
Portrait: Photograph © John Weber. Courtesy Gagosian.
Cover: Michael Heizer, installation view, 2022. Artwork © Michael Heizer. Photo © Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
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