Flip and Two Twisters (Trilogy), 1977

Flip and Two Twisters (Trilogy), 1977, stainless steel strips, motors, 9 x 12.5 x 5.5 metres.  One of Lye’s biggest indoor sculptures and one where he exploits not only “body” but sexual associations: “Hanging from the ceiling is an eighteen foot strip of steel.  I call it a piece of sperm, and on the other side is an equivalent spermatozoa wiggling and waggling and in the middle is a great female loop king of shape, a vulva shape, and you’ve got the whole male-female symbolism.” Lye goes on to say, however, that the work really aims at a deeper level of meaning – its dramatic dance is a celebration of “energy,” which he saw as the basic material with which he worked. “We are physically organized to individuate energy…. Many parallels exist between the way our organism handles energy and the way a motorized kinetic work programs energy.”