On Sunday, May 12, 2024 at 2 p.m., the sculpture “Twister Again” by the American artist Alice Aycock will be inaugurated in the Erzgebirgisches Freilichtmuseum in Seiffen. This means that the art and sculpture path PURPLE PATH, the major art project of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025, is growing by another work. By 2025, a permanent exhibition of contemporary art will be created in rural public space in the region around the Saxon industrial city. The works of renowned Saxon, national and international artists create a symbolic connection between the Capital of Culture and the 38 surrounding partner communities. The project is curated by Alexander Ochs.
Image above: © Ernesto Uhlmann / Radar Studios
The sculptor Alice Aycock, born in 1946, is one of the most important artists of postmodern sculpture, whose work can be seen in the collections of major museums as well as in public spaces worldwide. In the late 1980s, she was one of the first to use 3D software for her artistic designs. Alice Aycock has been working on her series “Twister” for around ten years. The structures made of aluminum touch on topics such as climate change and the loss of balance in our interaction with nature, but also technical innovation and engineering skills.
The technique of tire turning emerged as an innovative craft in Seiffen with the decline of tin mining around 1800. The small wooden tire figures are known worldwide as part of Erzgebirge folk art.
The work “Twister Again” now stands between the old turners and craftsmen’s houses in the Seiffen open-air museum: the energy and movement of tire twisting interplays with the dynamic whirl of Aycock’s sculpture.
The landscapes around Chemnitz – the Ore Mountains, Central Saxony, the Zwickauer Land – are shaped by the 850-year history of mining. The mining of silver, tin, cobalt, kaolin and bismuth determined life; everything has something to do with it. “C the Unseen”, the motto of the European Capital of Culture 2025, invites us to re-read and interpret this story for the 21st century. For curator Alexander Ochs, the PURPLE PATH art and sculpture trail is more than an exhibition of contemporary art, it is also a “storyteller”, a link between the past and the future.
With Alice Aycock’s sculpture “Twister Again” in Seiffen, a total of nine works of art have been permanently installed so far: by Nevin Aladağ in Zwönitz, Tony Cragg in Aue-Bad Schlema, Friedrich Kunath in Thalheim, Tanja Rochelmeyer in Flöha, Carl Emanuel Wolff in Ehrenfriedersdorf, Uli Aigner in Lößnitz, Iskender Yediler in Lichtenstein/Sa. and Gregor Gaida in Oederan.
The PURPLE PATH art and sculpture path is Chemnitz’s major art project in 2025. By the time the PURPLE PATH art and sculpture path is officially opened in April 2025, around 20 more will be added, including by artists who, like Alice Aycock, are among the pioneers artistic revolutionaries of the 20th century include Rebecca Horn (Lößnitz), James Turrell (Oelsnitz/Erzg.), William Tucker (Callenberg) and Sean Scully (Schneeberg).
WHEN?
Opening on Sunday, 12. May 2024 at 2 pm
WHERE?
Erzgebirgisches Freilichtmuseum
Hauptstraße 203
09548 Kurort Seiffen
