Reuben Margolin

“I’m not trying to copy nature, I’m trying to relate to it, to see if I can make anything that has that same quality,” says Reuben Margolin, creator of fabulous kinetic sculptures. Using wood, metal, cardboard and recycled materials, this American artist makes small as well as immense moving objects, driven mechanically or electrically, many of which mimic wave patterns.One of Margolin’s latest projects, called Nebula, consists of 14,064 bicycle reflectors suspended by 445 cables and a single motor,  in the atrium of the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas. Wired Magazine described this work of art as “possibly the most ambitious kinetic sculpture ever made.” But Margolin’s smaller mechanical wave sculptures, including a wave made of wooden slats driven by two handles, are equally awe-inspiring.Margolin started tinkering at an early age, assisted by his father. He went on to study English at Harvard University and then attended academies in Florence and St Petersburg. Among his earliest kinetic sculptures were three mechanical caterpillars. One of his first suspended wave sculptures was inspired by a rafting trip, during which he was fascinated by the eddies that form while paddling.Margolin’s work is certainly not restricted to wave sculptures. He once built a round table, which could drive, and travelled through America in search of interesting conversation, and he has transformed rickshaws into gigantic butterflies and collaborated to create the world’s first mobile park. Margolin can make or mimic almost anything his imagination comes up with.