Michael Heizer. Negative - Positive +

For the his first one person show in Italy, the American artist Michael Heizer has created new works specifically for the Prada Foundation exhibition spaces.
Heizer, who is known for his immense works made in the American deserts, has not reduced in the scale in which he usually works. Creating installations that completely fill the large Foundation exhibition halls.
Hanging on the walls at the entrance of the exhibition are two steel paintings that deal with the relationship between positive and negative, as in the first shaped canvases of 1966-67. Inside the two frames, a square and a circle, the artist has enclosed empty space, making in this way void (or negative) an integral part of these works.
Following the same concept of positive and negative Heizer has created Negative Line, for the large rectangular hall, a work similar to Rift, which was made in 1968 in Nevada desert. The piece consists of a 30 cm deep steel line embedded in the floor forming zig-zag path around the columns in the hall.
Installed in the second large exhibition hall are Stele 1 and Stele 2, monumental blocks of diorite granite weighing respectively 16 and 18 tons. The rocks were taken by the artist from a California quarry to his workshop in Nevada. There, the surface of the rock was engraved with abstract patterns. The rocks were then caged in massive metal frames and transported over 5000 km from Nevada to New Jersey, where they were packed in preparation for the ocean crossing to the Genova port, after which they underwent the last leg of their journey to the Prada Foundation.