Opus Motus – United Marble Colors
The use of marble colors throughout history, in both private and public settings, has almost always been a manifestation of social prestige, opulence, and power.
The prestige that this material represents is entwined in its precious nature, because of how difficult it is to quarry and its resulting economic value.
Beyond its merely tangible aspects, different types of stone have always been attributed a symbolic significance, like Ancient Egyptian Red Porphyry, selected as the official material for Roman statues, or Ancient Greek Green Porphyry, which is just as valuable. Hence, the lithotypes and their colors were used with precise differentiation also according to their origins, which corresponded with the conquest and consequential domination of a specific territory, above all during the Roman Empire.
Nowadays, goods and stones, as such, are distributed globally and are often transported from one territory to another, to the point of losing any sense of origin.
In my opinion, this is a serious matter, because a stone is in and of itself a territory, and denying this fact makes its use senseless and difficult to justify in certain contexts.
Opus Motus is an experimental attempt to put stones in relation to their colors according to the optical effect of motion. This unique concept led to the creation of interaction between the marbles, mixing them up, blending them as if they were liquid colors.
If, as previously sustained, the stone is a territory, then this experiment is also an exercise in the fusion of territories. And if the territory is also synonymous with ethnicity, culture, and tradition, then Opus Motus is also a fusion of peoples.
I like and am captivated by this aspect of globalization, where the results may even be paradoxical combinations, like the potential union of warring territories or long-time enemies. North with South, East with West, hot with cold, and so on.
I would like to create a huge disk containing all the stones in the world, united, melded with each other. Ironically, it could be a simple reinterpretation of our Earth that continues to turn endlessly, colourful and wonderful as it is.
Watch below the video spot realized to illustrate the Opus Motus project, where all our “united marble colors” can be seen playing and melting together thanks to motion.
