Alice Aycock

Alice Aycock was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1946. In the 1970’s she was one of the youngest members of the circle of New York artists around Gordon Matta-Clark and the 112 Greene Street Gallery. Aycock first gained international recognition with her contribution to Documenta 6 (1977), The Beginnings of a Complex… . In her often large-scale sculptures and installations Aycock channels various themes; from cybernetics, phenomenology, physics, post-structuralism, information-overload, scientific discoveries, and computer programming to create works that sit on the cross-section between architecture and sculpture, eliciting both intellectual and emotional responses from their viewers.

Alice Aycock studied at Douglass College in New Brunswick and at Hunter College in New York City. She has received numerous awards, including the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from the International Sculpture Center in Hamilton (2017), the International Association of Art Critics Award (2014), the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2013) and the Americans for the Arts Public Art Award (2008). Her work has been presented in exhibitions around the world, including solo shows at MoMA, MCA Chicago, Serpentine Gallery, Royal Djurgården, Stockholm, as well as comprehensive European museum retrospectives in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In 1990, a second retrospective with the title Complex Visions was organized by the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville. Major group exhibitions include the 1979 and 1981 Whitney Biennials in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Documenta (1977; 1987), the Venice Biennale (1978; 1980; 1982), LACMA and Haus der Kunst (2012), as well as the seminal exhibition Materializing ‘Six Years’: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art at the Brooklyn Museum (2012). Alice Aycock’s works can be found in the collections of MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, LACMA, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and many others. Numerous early and recent outdoor installations are permanently located in public and private collections in the US, Europe and Asia. Some of these pieces include: Liftoff, Des Moines International Airport, Des Moines, Iowa, East River Roundabout, New York, the New San Francisco Public Library, the Sacramento Convention Center, Star Sifter at Terminal One of JFK International Airport, Ghost Ballet for East Bank Machineworks in Nashville, What Every Traveler Needs To Know at the Philadelphia International Airport, and the recently completed The Game of Flyers Part Two at Washington Dulles International Airport. Permanent reconstructions of A Simple Network of Underground Wells and Tunnels from 1975 and Low Building with Dirt Roof (for Mary) from 1973 are installed at Omi International Arts Center in Ghent and the Storm King Art Center, respectively. Alice Aycock lives and works in New York City.