A kinetic free-standing sculpture by the American artist George Rickey has stood on the southern edge of the campus grounds of Fulda University of Applied Sciences for 35 years.
At the end of 1982: the "Kunst am Bau" (Art in Buildings) funding programme of the State of Hesse also opened up the possibility for Fulda University of Applied Sciences to acquire a work of art and place it on the campus. The choice falls on a kinetic object by George Rickey, which stood in front of the Alte Oper in Frankfurt as part of the exhibition "Spielraum - Raumspiele". The State Building Office in Fulda arranges the purchase for the university for 90,000 marks. In December '82, the sculpture is erected in Fulda and inaugurated on 13 April 1983 in the presence of the artist.
The free-standing sculpture, over five metres high, rests and moves. Its asymmetrically mounted, needle-like tapered metal arms react like the branches of a tree. They rotate depending on the direction and intensity of the wind - without a motor.
Rickey, a multiple Documenta participant, was born in 1907 in South Bend/Indiana, USA. He studied in Oxford, Paris and Chicago, among other places. The artist, who commuted between East Chatham/New York, Santa Barbara/California and Berlin until his old age, is considered one of the pioneers of modern art. His first mobiles were created in 1945 under the influence of Alexander Calder's works. Rickey died on 17 July 2002.
"I study and use movements permitted by natural laws as far as my understanding and technical abilities allow me. These movements and the omnipresent force of gravity are the only things I use from nature. Although I do not imitate nature, I perceive similarities. If my sculptures sometimes look like plants or clouds or waves, this is explained by the fact that they obey the same laws of movement and follow the same mechanical principles. Nature is rarely motionless. All the environment is in motion, the natural one from the celestial bodies to the atoms, as well as the technical one. ... The forms of movement turn out to be possible units of measurement for time, the 'apparative construction' as an attempt to undermine clock time, appointment time, units of time measurement. Movement needs time. The underlying energies divide time differently from the clock. Time proceeds rhythmically in the broadest sense. The beat of the machine, the regular division of time is an aid: useful and necessary; but it has nothing to do with natural time, which kinetic art makes us feel again and includes in our sense of time, which can thereby become more comprehensive and natural" (from: Mahlow, 100 Jahre Metallplastik, Frankfurt a.M. 1981).