Prehistoric Gulliver: The Hand Tools

Lenin observed that "quantity has its own quality."

So with concrete.

Artist Michael Heizer "since 1970 has been living in the Nevada desert and working on an immense environmental earthwork, a permanent complex of Minimalist forms which at more than a mile long and quarter-mile wide is one of the largest sculptures created by an individual artist."

So wrote Ken Johnson in the July 21 New York Times in his review of Heizer's new show of eight sculptures (above and below), up though September 23 at the PaceWildenstein Gallery in New York.

All the works were created in the late 1980s and represent much-enlarged concrete copies of prehistoric hand tools, not abstractions but, rather, precise magnifications of actual existing objects used for cutting or scraping, ranging in size from about 5 feet to over 16 feet.

This show represents the first time that Heizer's sculptures have been exhibited together in the U.S.

See how your ancestors earned a living.

PaceWildenstein is at 545 West 22nd Street, Chelsea; 212-421-3292.