Employing increasingly complex mechanisms throughout his career, Rickey constructed precisely calibrated sculptural works which move with quiet, poetic deliberation. Having turned to sculpture in the early 1950s, the artist soon began using gyroscopic forms of movement, constructing mechanisms that responded to the slightest fluctuations in air currents. In One Slender Line Horizontal (1994), the elegant tapering line resembles the hand of a clock, almost humorously reversing and accelerating the passage of time through movement in space. Unfolding over time, the trajectory of lines and planes invites extended looking, pointing at the temporal dimension of aesthetic experience. As Rickey later remarked, “I think it’s important to make art that you have to wait for.”

George Rickey is one the key exponents of kinetic sculpture, whose works can be found in the permanent collections of over 150 museums worldwide, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.