Alice Aycock

In recent years Aycock has developed a strikingly elegant approach to interpreting technological developments. One of the major visual motifs of her recent creations is their cyclonic structures, exemplified by the present work which possesses a sense of both virulent energy and grace and as the artist explained in 2011: ‘Much of my work in both the public and private spheres has been a meditation on the philosophical ramifications of technology from the simplest tool (the arrowhead and plow) to the computer. Many of these works have incorporated images of wheel and turbines and references to energy in the form of spirals, whirlwinds, whirlpools, spinning tops, whirly-gigs, and so on’. The culmination of these ideas is found in the Park Avenue Paper Chase project, a sculpture installation between 52nd and 57th streets on Park Avenue to be installed in spring 2014. The project comprises 6 separate structures which are to be sited on the islands between the flowing uptown and downtown motor traffic, and are a visual representation of the dynamic energy of New York.

Alice Aycock, born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is one of the most eminent practitioners of site-orientated sculpture in America. Aycock's early public works were land pieces that involved reshaping the earth. Whilst many of these have consequently disappeared, other examples of her archaeological and industrial inspired sculptures can be found in towns and cities throughout America in the collections of numerous museums and institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. She exhibited at the 39th Venice Biennale in 1980, and both Documenta VI, in 1977, and VIII, in 1987, in Kassel, Germany.