Corner Cube (1980–81) develops ideas Rickey had explored in his Unstable Cubes of the 1970s, in which the cube is defined not as a solid mass but as a structure that encloses space. Here, three stainless-steel planes mark out the form of a cube while leaving much of it open, so that the work appears to hold a volume of air rather than material. The surrounding architecture becomes part of the sculpture: positioned high in the corner, the work uses the meeting of two walls and the ceiling to complete its geometry. This placement also recalls Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, famously installed high in the corner of the room in the 1915 exhibition 0.10. Like Malevich, Rickey turns a simple geometric form into an object that challenges the distinction between material presence and empty space.

George Rickey (1907–2002) was one of the leading figures in twentieth-century kinetic sculpture. Born in South Bend, Indiana, and raised partly in Scotland, he first trained as a painter before turning to sculpture after the Second World War. From the 1950s onward, he became known for works made from carefully balanced metal elements that move in response to air, gravity and changes in the surrounding environment. His sculptures combine precise engineering with simple geometric forms and constant movement. Rickey exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with major solo exhibitions at institutions including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin. His work is held in more than 150 museum collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; National Galleries of Scotland; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; and Kunstmuseum Bern.