Walter De Maria The Singular Experience, 2025, installation view © 2025 Estate of Walter De Maria Photo: Thomas Lannes Courtesy Gagosian
Walter De Maria Red Truck / Square, Triangle, Circle, from Truck Trilogy, 2011–17 © 2025 Estate of Walter De Maria Photo: Thomas Lannes Courtesy Gagosian
The title of Walter De Maria’s exhibition at Gagosian Le Bourget summarizes perfectly the entire production of the artist : The Singular Experience. Every encounter with De Maria’s work is a singular experience. The Earth Room, in SoHo, or The Broken Kilometer or The Lightning Field, of course, in the high desert of New Mexico, or his work in the Chichu Art museum in Naoshima, Time/Timeless/No Time, for example - are transcendent experiences. The feeling before his work is, as one critic wrote, “both physical and psychic.”
Walter De Maria in an airplane on a trip to the Midwest, c. 1969 Courtesy Estate of Walter De Maria and Gagosian
Gagosian Le Bourget, north of Paris, presents, among other important works, De Maria’s last sculpture started before he passed away in 2013. Called Truck Trilogy, it features 3 1950s Chevrolet Advance Design 3100 pickup trucks, models built after WWII, when the artist was a teenager. From the bed of each pickup rise 3 polished steel rods anchored in a massive oak wood base. Each rod emerging from each perfectly polished pickup truck is of a different shape: round, square, triangular. The contrast between these strange, highly polished objects, reflecting snippets of the gallery, is both humorous and mysterious, as if some extraterrestrial culture had dropped them in the vast concrete space of the gallery near the tarmac of the Bourget airport where Charles Lindbergh landed in 1927, and now mostly used for private jets.
Walter De Maria The Singular Experience, 2025, installation view © 2025 Estate of Walter De Maria Photo: Thomas Lannes Courtesy Gagosian
Among the works presented is 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows (1985), a floor sculpture composed of 42 polished polygonal polished stainless steel rods, in 3 rows, each successive row increasing by 1 meter in length. As one moves around it, the pattern seems to change, just as the light changes over the course of the day or the angle at which we are looking at the pieces. The work, similar to The 2000 Sculpture or The Broken Kilometer, or even The Lightning Field, with its sophisticated combination of dimension and spacing, shows the artist’s interest in mathematics, but also in the way a musical score functions. De Maria was not only a conceptual artist, he was also a musician, which greatly influenced his works.
Walter De Maria, born in California, in 1935, was an artist and a composer. He was a drummer for what later became Andy Warhol’s The Velvet Underground. His musical training as a percussionist had a major influence on his art. His work is all about rhythmic patterns, harmony, sequences. Some of his pieces, like 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows, at Gagosian Le Bourget, or The Broken Kimoleter, for example, have a deep connection to a Philip Glass score, with their repetitive sequence and their anchor note present in each sequence. There is a repetitive playfulness that captures the viewer.
Walter De Maria, 'The Lightning Field', (1977), New Mexico. Courtesy Estate of Walter De Maria and Dia Art Foundation. Image © John Cliett
Walter De Maria’s work spans the whole sequence of 1960s and 1970s art. It is connected to minimal art, conceptual art and land art, of course. The Lighting Field might be the most famous piece of land art in the world (at least until James Turrell’s Roden Crater is finally completed). He liked to work with industrial materials - stainless steel, aluminium, concrete, glass - which became the material of the genre. He is one of the greatest contemporary artists whose work occupies a special place in the mind of art lovers as well as of anyone who has been in contact with his work. De Maria’s works modify our relationship to the earth, to space, to time. They show how art can expand our awareness. His rule that “every work should have at least ten meanings” could be the key to why De Maria’s artworks continue to live in our imagination and puzzle and enchant us long after we have seen them. There are indeed 10 different ways to think about De Maria’s magical works.
~Jean-Sébastien Stehli
Walter De Maria Black Truck / Triangle, Circle, Square, (detail) from Truck Trilogy, 2011–17 © 2025 Estate of Walter De Maria Photo: Rob McKeever Courtesy Gagosian
Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience. Gagosian Le Bourget. Until April 18, 2026. gagosian.com
