About the Work
Gravity, equilibrium and moment of inertia, along with wind and weather, are the driving forces behind George Rickey's monumental sculptures made from industrially manufactured materials and reduced to geometric forms. Without touching each other, the four long, tapering arms of 'Four Lines Oblique Gyratory' also move freely in the space at differing speeds, depending on the air circulation. Both the special form and the material permit a fast and a slow rotation of the steel arms, each of which is longer than 4.5 metres. The shiny surface reflects the sunlight and further emphasises the moment when the static is dissolved, showing at the same time the rapidly changing lighting conditions.
Like the objects of his contemporaries Norbert Kricke and Heinz Mack, Rickey's sculptures are determined by a technoid aesthetic which nonetheless dissolves into a peaceful exchange with nature. Its central design media are not motorised devices, but space, movement and natural phenomena.
The engineer-artist Rickey, who worked for the U.S. Air Force for three years, focused in his objects primarily on the kinetic potential of material and construction based on the laws of nature. 'Four Lines Oblique Gyratory' can be seen as following in the tradition of Alexander Calder and of Suprematist Abstraction. As their successor, Rickey was concerned not with imitating nature, but with giving nature its 'room to manoeuvre'.
