Fine Art Artist

The works of David Rubello express the wonder of human perception. The subject of almost all of his work is stated in his title for one silkscreen: Poetry of Space. However this concept must be mixed with another in the title for a conceptual event which he worked out with two other artists: Paint, Space, and Energy, for the poetry of his space is dynamic and filled with hermetic energy.  All of Rubello’s painting compositions explore interrelationships of clear geometric planes and volumes in space. The viewer tends to ‘read’ the geometric shapes as if they

were ‘pictures’ of sculptural three-dimensional shapes. The poetry of space and the energy of the compositions lie in the varying ways Rubello sets up tensions between the possible three-dimensional existence and the reality of optical illusion. ....the compositions play with ‘flippable’ forms. These are geometric shapes which can be seen in two different positions in space: basically one can perceive them either as advancing or

receding. Because of the nature of our perspective processes we cannot simultaneously see such figures as both ‘going’ and ‘coming’, both hollow and solid. We must ‘flip’ from the one perception to the other. We can speed up perspective switching from one vision to the opposite, but never can the two views be simultaneously ‘seen’. Hence the composition of these works can shift literally and clearly as we watch.  The work of David Rubello introduces us to a magic world of shapes and space which becomes animated as we look at it. Entering his visual world heightens our awareness of forms in space and the wonder of the processes of our perception of them.

Diane Kirkpatrick, PhD

Professor of Art History

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor November 1973

The works of David Rubello express the wonder of Rubello, one of the best younger painters, is obsessed by the burning

need to establish plastic relationships on the deepest imaginable level. In this struggle the barriers between reason and passion, rational and irrational forces, erected by the toils of painting, crumble under the weight of his talent. Time and space lose all meaning and his brush re-disposes the primitive and scientific in a new serial order. When his brush replaces the ruler, plastic qualities are reducible to their artistic qualities - a prerequisite of all poetic association of life and mind. The plastic validity of the new combination is felt as a shock by the artist and evoked as an electric thrill. When the colors become phosphorescent, visual relationships appear particularly disturbing, the eye of the child is identified with vision; duty the watchful realization of pictorial activity - the microcosmic god of the aesthete and a mechanical incarnation of the super ego. The pulsation of the painterly surface affects the course of

the stars, the light and color is lit by butterfly wings. In the fluidity of forms, progress is accomplished by the changes of color; nearness and remoteness are expressed in terms of liquefaction, etherealization and solidification; distance in terms of movement evoked by degrees of thinness and opacity. David Rubello and his melting down of forms enables his artistic nature to realize the split nature of the plastic problem. Rubello’s forms are metamorphosed into color and line and in gaining or loosing phosphorescences, he discovers his mythical past.  If Rubello had his way, the world we inhabit would exchange it’s vulgar apparel for the regalia of rainbows of unheard of colors, luminosity would be recognized by it’s temperature and speech.

Gerome Kamrowski

Professor of Art

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor 1973