Mathmatics possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a
beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
-Lord Russell Bertrand
Projection and Rotation: Light Works: 1983 to 1987
Robbin relied on the motion of the viewer for is paintings. But he also
created sculptures. These created the same effect, but instead of a painted
canvas in the background, he used the projected shadow of the sun's rays
onto the sculpture itself. When concepts of stereo vision were becoming
very popular and functional, Robbin implemented those concepts into is work.
In my light pieces...I found ways to use stereo and fuse it with planar
rotation. Red and blue lights shine on welded-steel-rod, low-relief sculptures:
a rod that blocks out the red light leaves a blue shadow, and that same
rod also blocks out the blue light to leave a red shadow. The red and blue
lights are placed so that the distance between the red shadow structure
and the blue shadow structure is precisely right to give a stereo fusion
of the images...Thus there are tow complete structures in the same place
at the same time. One is made up of steel rods and parallaxes, changing
its aspect as the viewer moves around it. The second structure is impervious
to the viewer's movement; although it looks completely three-dimensional,
it is only a product of the lights and steel structure and does not change
as the viewer moves. These two structures have planes in common, and are
related to one another as are the cells in hypercubes. 72
By his own admission, these pieces were very "low tech." By combining
his sculpture, two light sources, and red and blue filters, he brought about
an "effect [which] is an original, gripping, and surprising presentation
of the special planar rotation of four-dimensional objects."
Untitled #3 (1987)
