Six works will be on view beginning March 8th until July 20th on the Park Avenue medians between 52nd and 57th Streets. A seventh work will be installed at Park and 66th Street in front of the Park Avenue Armory during the same period. Aycock has long been one of very few women exploring the relationship between structure, site, and viewer on an architectural scale, like her peers Richard Serra and Mark di Suvero.
Ranging in size from 12 – 27 feet in height and 18 – 70 feet in length, the aluminum and fiberglass works in the new installation will form an arresting presence in the heart of midtown Manhattan. According to Aycock “I tried to visualize the movement of wind energy as it flowed up and down the avenue creating random whirlpools, touching down here and there and sometimes forming dynamic three-dimensional massing of forms. The sculptural assemblages suggest waves, wind turbulence, turbines, and vortexes of energy.”
Many of the new works incorporate images of wheels and turbines and references to energy in the form of spirals, whirlwinds, whirlpools, spinning tops, and whirly-gigs. One of the works references the expressive quality of wind through drapery and the chaotic beauty of flow dynamics. The sculptures can be read from both sides of the avenue and the visual narrative plays to both the uptown and downtown movement of traffic patterns. Aycock continues “As much as the sculptures are obviously placed on the mall, I wanted the works to have a random, haphazard quality – in some cases, piling up on itself, with others spinning off into the air.”
