What carries the idea of rocks as artwork? ‘Massive weight,’ replies Michael Heizer in a gallery statement announcing his current exhibition of new stone and steel sculpture at Chelsea’s Gagosian Gallery. Sheer size, heaviness, and a certain kind of audacity in relocating huge pieces of nature blasted out of place and trucked into art-related settings are the hallmark of Heizer’s practice. In the recent sculpture, rocks seem to almost perch on thick planes of rusted steel in geometric shapes, setting up a dynamic interplay between manmade and natural forms that suggests both symbiosis and antagonistic struggle. (On view on 21st Street through April 16th).
Tag: land art
Rena Detrixhe at Spencer Brownstone Gallery
Finely sifted red soil imported from Oklahoma becomes a patterned carpet in Rena Detrixhe’s first New York solo show at Spencer Brownstone Gallery. Using a trowel to smooth down the dirt, then imprinting it with modified shoe soles, the Kansas-based artist considers the symbolic value attached to land in the mid-west while alluding to mankind’s impact on it. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 16th).