Michael Heizer. Object Sculptures

The CIT Art Foundation, a public-law institution established by Teresa and Rafael
Jablonka, will stage a new exhibition of sculptures created by the American artist Michael Heizer
at Böhm Chapel, Hürth near Cologne, beginning on April 7, 2019.
The exhibition will feature 7 sculptures created in the years 1988–89. The artist refers to
the works as Object Sculptures, because they are related to prehistoric objects or tools from the
Stone Age.
The sculptor said about the works to be displayed at Böhm Chapel: “The sculptures that
I’m making are titled after prehistoric functional devices, normally tools. The majority of them are
early prehistoric tool forms. They’re simply in many ways replicas of these things. There is
obviously a lot of interpretation of my hand when I build them, but what I’m looking for is an
object. Well, these objects have existed; they’re extremely interesting in their original form, and
they seem to reoccur in the modern world. I see a lot of aerodynamic shapes in the primitive tool
forms, these types of shapes that were internationally used by all people in the early beginnings of
mankind. For maybe thousand of years these things were used, so I’m representing the form, but
I’m looking at it again in a new way. And I find it a worthwhile activity to reintroduce these forms
that in many ways are lost, to reintroduce aesthetically which is all I can do anyhow, and I hope
that there is a transcendental modern quality to them that ultimately makes these things more than
applications but makes them contribute as a form. The fact that they existed thousands of years
ago does not mean that people have them indexed in their minds as sculptural forms. They have
them indexed in their mind, if at all, as probably some obscure artifacts put away on a shelf that
you walk by every fast in a museum and probably wouldn’t look closely at.”1

More info: http://www.boehmchapel.com/exhibitions/exhibitions-2019/michael-heizer/