Movement: a progression from one location to another. Something we do every day, at the breakneck speeds required of us in this world. But it’s rare that we ever stop to reflect on these movements; we think of them as means to various ends. The art of Reuben Heyday Margolin, an American artist and sculptor, seeks to correct this everyday oversight, making movement its focal point.
In fact, he seeks to press movement to its very extremes. In the installation “Nebula,” a piece commissioned by the Hilton Anatole hotel in Dallas, TX, the movement occurs 150 feet in the air. The “Nebula” takes up the atrium of the hotel, almost seeming to swim as a motor rotates 445 cables connected to 15,000 reflectors, giving off a jewel-like light. The atrium is illuminated by the “Nebula,” but more importantly, the intricate nature of the installation, as well as the impressive engineering feat that is its execution, leaves all of its onlookers awestruck.
Margolin’s other works, including such installations as “The Magic Wave” and “The Square Wave,” are all variations of the “Nebula,” in that they are all massive, intricate demonstrations of engineering ingenuity, as well as art pieces with greater meaning. Describing “The Magic Wave” in an interview, he spoke of the “slow and undulating” nature of the waves created by the cables of the structure, which he says is inspired by water, “the way water moves in certain kinds of fluid movements.”
He also notes the inspiration of mathematics, specifically geometry, as well as mechanical movements. The waves produced in his installation all come together in what he calls “the matrix,” the intricate web of over 2000 pulleys and four kilometers of cable, which ultimately adds together the waves—all of different amplitudes and frequencies—producing the water-like, fluid movement.
Asked to explain the piece’s complexity, Margolin noted that it’s not “complex for complexity’s sake.” Instead, Margolin said, “It’s complex because we’re trying to make something beautiful.” He went on to cite the inherent value of the piece, acknowledging that, “We live in an increasingly digital world,” and as a result, “… we don’t see a lot of what’s going on, what happens behind and inside boxes.”
He hopes that his art “inspires a love of math and also of movements that you find in nature.” Ultimately, his art aims to alert us to these external and unnoticed movements, to notice the particulars of nature in a world that seems to be focused on blurring them out.
by Jasmine Soraya
