Power is invisible, so Tobin must show the ends rather than the means.He accomplishes that by inventing and refining the tools and techniques needed to gain an advantage over the invisible, to uproot from the underground, to capture the impact of an explosion.He has harnessed liquid media like bronze and wax and glass because they have a duality that parallels the dual nature of power: means and ends, liquid and solid, slickly elusive and brutally physical.The result is what Tobin refers to as "bringing art and artifact together," a fragment of his own imagination realized as a work of art. Tobin envisions someone stumbling upon and pondering such a work hundreds of years from now as an archeological curiosity. And he contemplates how a bronze termite hill might survive an ice age or be transformed during a volcanic event.
By William Warmus
This essay appeared in Sculpture magazine, March 2001 (Vol.20, No.2)
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