Reuben Margolin is an artist who creates kinetic sculptures who, perhaps more than anyone I've ever seen, blends art and science so gracefully and demonstrates such deep knowledge of both disciplines. He takes the smallest, otherwise unnoticeable events - a tarp waving in the wind, a drop hitting water's surface, the whirlpool created by a paddle in use - and creates huge, complex, moving sculptures to illustrate the intricacies behind these seemingly mundane occurrences. As discussed in the video, none of Margolin's kinetic sculptures rely on computers to operate. He instead uses a network of gears, pulleys, and other pieces and parts to animate his art.
Waves - sine waves, the waves of a bird's moving wing - seem to be an area of particular interest to Margolin. He finds them so perfectly analogous to existence, discussing how they are always changing and moving.
We see waves absolutely everywhere. We see them in water. We see them in wind. And, because it's based on a circle, we see them in anything that cycles. And so, things like the Earth going around the Sun, the seasons, the Moon going around the Earth, the tides...all these are expressed as waves. -Reuben Margolin
Margolin's ability to focus in on minute details and occurrences and blow them up in such a meticulous and analytic manner, exposing hidden complexity, sets his work leagues apart from any other artist's pieces that I've seen. He's given several talks and seminars on his thoughts and work, and has produced installation pieces for the Hilton Anatole and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, sharing his thoughts on the intricate clockwork of the existence with his art.
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