Valais, Switzerland Press release August 12, 2012

For the first time: an in situ artwork by the American Michael

Heizer in SwiSS ALPS ! An exceptional contemporary art program will be inaugurated this summer, in Valais in the Alps, with a permanent artwork created by one of the most important American land artists. This program is to be developed in the coming years in all 13 districts of the canton Valais. For the first chapter of this artistic adventure, the Air & Art Foudnation has invited Micheal Heizer (* 1944), a world renowned artist, to invest a site near the Mauvoisin Dam. It is the first time that he has created a permanent in situ work on this scale in Europe. The opening of this unparalleled event, a unique rendez-vous in the Alps between nature and contemporary art, will take place on August 18, 2012.

The artwork by Michael Heizer

The first realization introduced by the Foundation Air & Art in Valais is an artwork by the American artist Michael Heizer. It is located on the territory of the municipality of Bagnes near the Mauvoisin Dam. In close relation with the surrounding landscape, a free and unbounded space, Michael Heizer’s construction has a strong sculptural presence. It is characterized by its size and its industrial character. The warm color of corten steel and the perfect geometry of the intervention come into perfect contrast with the environment. The industrial material asserts a contemporary aesthetic of a radical intervention in and on the landscape. The perfectly developed geometry establishes a powerful dialogue with the chaotic shapes of nature. A sculpture in negative, Negative Tangential Circular Line is defined by the vacuum it integrates in an essential way. In the true spirit of and its artworks reacting to a specific site, it invites visitors to re-examine the environment in contrast, and especially the full volumes that surround it: mountains subject to constant erosion by the natural elements and a dam wall holding back accumulated water under pressure.

A pioneer of Land Art with an international reputation, Michael Heizer has worked primarily in the . It is the first time that he has created a permanent in situ work on this scale in Europe.

– 1 – Background and technical information

Two and a half years ago, the Bagnes Cultural Committee and Air & Art Foundation chose together the artist Michael Heizer to intervene on the Bagnes territory. The artist, first contacted through his gallery in New York, quickly decided to carry out on this occasion a permanent artwork from a sign designed 40 years ago in the desert sand using his bike: 3 tangent rings with two smaller ones, one inside and one outside of a ring of larger diameter.

The technical realization of the artwork is the work of the firm Zwahlen & Mayr located in the canton of Vaud (http://www.zwahlen.ch/). Strictly speaking, the production of corten steel elements took three months, between March and May 2012 and was realized partly by apprentices of the company.

From mid-July the site has been ready to receive the sculpture and a special convoy moved some 26 tons of corten steel from the firm Zwahlen & Mayr to the site near the Mauvoisin Dam.

Title of the artwork: Tangential Circular Negative Line 1968-2012

Dimensions of the artwork: 34.3 x 22.9 mètres Diameter of the big ring: 22.9 mètres Diameter of the little rings: 11.4 mètres

Material: Corten steel Ground finishes: Gravel of the region - size 4/8

Timetable: 2009 Beginning of the project 2010 Development of the project 2011 Production planning and final choice of location of the artwork 2012 in March: – Beginning of the production of the sculpture in the firm’s workshop early July: – Excavation of the site mid-July: – Transportation of corten steel elements end of July: – Backfilling and finishing august 18: – Opening

Identification of the location for the installation of the Artwork, Summer 2011

– 2 – Manufacture of corten steel components in the firm Zwahlen & Mayr April 2012

Michael Heizer, biography

Born in Berkeley, California, in 1944, Michael Heizer is an unavoidable artist of American Contemporary Art. Having exhibited mainly in the U.S. and Europe, he was trained at the Art Institute of San Francisco (1963-64) before traveling to New York in 1966. There he met artists who would mark the history of art from the second half of the twentieth century, such as Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Walter De Maria, Tony Smith and Frank Stella. Then, very quickly, he would leave for the Western United States with Walter De Maria and devote himself, with him, to the development of what would come to be known as the Land Art. Today he lives and works in Nevada.

Land Art

Land Art artworks escape the confined space of showrooms to take possession of the landscape. By the late 1960s a number of artists, wanting to escape the institutional art world, chose to intervene in the space of natural or urban landscapes. Among the most representative works are the art packaging of Christo, Spiral Jetty of Robert Smithson, Double Negative of Micheal Heizer, Lightning Field of Walter De Maria or Stone Circles of Richard Long.

In the 1960s, Michael Heizer said: «The position of art as an article of barter weakens gradually as the economic structure becomes engorged. Museums and collections are filled, the floors collapsed, but the actual space exists.»

Land Art is by definition in situ. It enters into connexion with the surrounding nature, an essential parameter of its installation. Sometimes ephemeral, but mainly because they are generally in not very accessible places, Land Art intallations exist essentially in the form of photographic images or video. In contrast, the artwork by Michael Heizer now offers in Valais an exceptionally close experience throughout the summer. Like many Land Art artists, Heizer sometimes uses landscape as a canvas, sculpting at other times the earth, imperceptibly altering it or on the contrary dramatically. He is thus part of the great family of artists such as Carl Andre, Christo, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets, Andy Goldsworthy, Peter Hutchinson, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson or Hamish Fulton, etc.

– 3 – Some site-specific artworks by Michael Heizer

From smaller-scale to titanic projects, Heizer develops artworks characterized by their gigantism.

Levitated Mass, 1969-2012

Levitated Mass, one of his last productions, was set up last June at the Museum of Contemporary Art in (LACMA). It is a 340-ton boulder, a granite megalith «levitating» above a 456-feet-long trench, dug on the LACMA grounds. As in other works by the artist, the monumental negative form is the key to the experience of the artwork. Heizer had conceived this project in 1968, but it was only a few decades later, in Riverside County in California, that he found the best suited rock for his installation. As a result, visitors experience a levitated mass by entering a monumental trench, dug into the ground, which leads them to pass under the huge rock which required ten nights to be transported out of the desert to Los Angeles, 60 miles distant.

Double Negative, 1969-70

« Double Negative is the literal description of two incisions, but it has metaphysical implications, since a double negative is impossible. There is nothing and however it is still a sculpture. » Michael Heizer (quoted in Michael Heizer, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1984).

Double Negative is a sculpture «in negative» realized by Heizer. It is located on the eastern slopes of Mormon Mesa northwest of Overton, in the territory of the town Moapa Valley in Nevada. It consists of two cuts separated by an empty space, measuring 1,500 feet long, 50 feet deep and 30 feet wide. To achieve this artwork, 240,000 tons of rock were moved with bulldozers and dynamite. The artwork was acquired by MOCA (The Museum of Contemporary Art) in Los Angeles.

– 4 – Its strength lies in creating monumentality from the void, a substantial void since we could drop within the equivalent of the Empire State Building’s volume…

City, depuis 1972

Since 1972 Heizer has been working on the project , a «city-sculpture» of about a mile long under construction in the desert of Lincoln County (Nevada). This project has been in development for 40 years and occupies him to this day. Supported by Dia Foundation for the Art and Lannan Foundation, this long-term artistic work is not yet open to the public. Its opening is planned in three or four years.

Tangential Circular Negative Line, 1968-2012

Installation of the artwork at the Mauvoisin Dam, July 2012.

– 5 – Selected individual exhibitions by Michael Heizer

2011 Künstler der Galerie, Jablonka Galerie, Cologne 2010 Michael Heizer : Works from the 1960x and 70s, David Zwirner, New York Michael Heizer Markings, Nohra Haime Gallery, New York 2008 Michael Heizer, El Sourdog Hex, Berlin 2007 North, East, South, West, Dia : Beacon, Beacon, New York 2006 Michael Heizer, Pacewildenstein, 545 West 22nd Street, New York Michael Heizer : Works from the 70’s, Jablonka Galerie, Cologne 2003 Michael Heizer, Peter Freeman, Inc., New York 1998 Michael Heizer : Hard Edge Ejecta, Knoedler & Compagny, New York 1996 Michael Heizer : Negative – Positive+, Fondation Prada, Milan 1995 Michael Heizer : Works 1972-1976, Galerie Frank + Schulte, Berlin 1994 Art Before life : Michael Heizer, , New York 1990 Michael Heizer, Waddington Galleries, Londres Michael Heizer : objects sculptures, Knoedler & Compagny Gallery, New York Michael Heizer, Hill Gallery, Birmingham 1989 Michael Heizer, Ochi Gallery, Boise Michael Heizer : New Drawings, Akira Ikeda Gallery, Tokyo 1985 Michael Heizer : Major Works, Painting, Sculpture…, Xavier Fourcade, New York Michael Heizer : Dragged Mass Geometric, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY 1984 Michael Heizer : Geometric Extraction, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 1983 Michael Heizer : Paintings 1967, Oil & Steel Gallery, New York 1982 Michael Heizer : Elevated, Surface, Depressed, Flow Ace Gallery, Venice, Canada Michael Heizer : Sculpture, Ace Gallery, Venice, Canada Michael Heizer : Paintings, Ace Gallery, Los Angeles 1980 Michael Heizer, The St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Montréal Michael Heizer, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Allemagne et Kröller Müller, Otterlo, Pays-Bas 1977 Michael Heizer : Etched Glasse Windows, Ace Gallery, Los Angeles 1976 Michael Heizer : New Works, Xavier Fourcade, New York 1974 Michael Heizer : Recent Paintings, Fourcade, New York Michael Heizer Windows, Ace Gallery, Los Angeles 1970 Michael Heizer : New York-Nevada, Gallery, New York 1969 Michael Heizer, Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich, Allemagne

Selected collective exhibitions of Michael Heizer

2009 Photoconceptualism, 1966-1973, Whitney Museum of Amercian Art, New York 1968, Die Grosse Unschuld, Kunsthalle Bielfeld, Bielfeld 2005 On the Edge : Contemporary Art From the Daimlerchrysler Collection, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit 1997 47th International Art Exhibition 1977 Biennal Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 1971 Sixth Guggenheim International Exhibition, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1970 XXXV Exposizione internazionale d’arte di Venezia, Venise 1969 Earth Art, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York 1968 Sculpture Annual, Witney Museum of American Art, New York

– 6 – « Man will never create anything very large compared to the world, only compared to its own size. The most impressive objects that man has impinged are earth and moon. The greatest distance he understands is the distance that separates them, but it’s nothing compared to what he suspects the existence. » Michael Heizer (quoted in Michael Heizer, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1984).

« Son of an archaeologist, since childhood he has done the direct experience of many sites, among the most significant, of bygone civilizations. For him too, the origins of time and numeration lay in the cycles of the planets, constellations of stars. So he readdresses the issues of the human body as a tool for decoding, as a measure of all things (in his native English, yet the dimensions are expressed literally in body parts). His art, apparently megalomaniac, often violent, seeks to establish «these analogies between nature and human life» mentioned by Levi-Strauss, deploring that writing has stifled this «archaic ability to explain the world around us. » Ann Hindry, Michael Heizer ou le rhapsode planétaire, 1986

The Air & Art Foundation

Created in 2010 under the leadership of Mr. Jean-Maurice Varone, Foundation Air & Art aims to develop projects of contemporary art in relation to the territory. It wishes to entrust to international creators portions of landscapes for in situ monumental and permanent artistic interventions which will interact with nature and the environment - a site - through its history, identity or other characteristics of the site.

In southern Switzerland, in the heart of the Alps, each project will invest a different region of the canton of Valais, so that over the years these different « steps » will include the entire territory of the canton. Ultimately, these artworks will form an open path, unique and remarkable in the Swiss and international cultural landscape.

By an approach to culture in the broadest sense and with the desire to build a new exceptional contemporary heritage, at the beginning of this twenty-first century, this project aims to contribute to the dialogue on the relationship of man to his environment.

With this first realization, the Air & Art Foundation will launch its program to create permanent in situ artworks in Valais. This first installation was supported by the cantonal departments responsible for culture and economy, Loterie Romande, Raiffeisen banking group and the municipality of Bagnes. The Museum of Art – Valais and University of Fine Arts – Valais are partners of the foundation.

– 7 – Contact

FONDATION AIR & ART Technopôle 1 - 3960 Sierre + 41 (0)27 456 50 80 [email protected] www.air-art.ch

Jean-Maurice Varone + 41 (0) 79 286 84 75

Images

High resolution images of Michael Heizer’s artwork will be available on the website of the Foundation Air & Art from the opening (mandatory in case of publication: Robert Hofer photograph): www.air-art.ch

Foundation Council

Jean-Maurice Varone, designer, initiator of the project and president of the foundation Pascal Ruedin, director of Museum of Art – Valais, vice-president of the foundation Marie-Françoise Perruchoud-Massy, professor at the University of Applied Sciences - Valais , secretary of the foundation Sybille Omlin, director of the University of Fine Arts – Valais, member of the foundation Council Geneviève Zuber, independent journalist, member of the foundation Council

Partners

Loterie romande Department of the Economy, Energy and Territory – Canton Valais Department of Education, Culture and Sport - Canton Valais Raiffeisen Banking Group Municipality of Bagnes

The company Zwahlen & Mayr, Aigle The company Vaudan SA, Châble

Practical information

Itinerary : Martigny - Le Châble - Mauvoisin Date of opening : Saturday August 18, 2012 Artwork visits : from June to October according to the snow Altitude : 1900 meters GPS : 46.002462, 7.342901

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