“Open Plan: Michael Heizer”

As part of Whitney’s series of projects using its huge fifth floor as a single continuous gallery space (i.e no dividing walls), the museum resurrects Actual Size: Munich Rotary, a 1970 installation by earth art master Michael Heizer. The artist had been doing a group of photographs that were the actual size of the things they depicted, which in Heizer’s case meant landscapes populated by giant boulders reaching 20 feet in height and more. For this particular site-specific work created in Munich Germany, Heizer began by excavating a conical hole 18 feet deep, displacing 1,000 tons of soil in the process. Situating a camera at the bottom of the pit, he took a 360-degree panorama of the horizon line created by the crater’s lip. The black-and-white images were then stitched together in a kind of gargantuan slideshow diorama projected, yes, actual size. The results, recreated here, transforms terrain into an abstract curtain wall of soil and rock.