Primordials | Menoetius, 2023

Marcus Vinicius De Paula
Primordials | Menoetius, 2023
Italian alabaster, resin, LED
55 x 9.5 x 9.5 inches
“This grouping of four, each standing around 50 inches tall and weighing 600 pounds, are unusually large for this type of stone. Their scale invokes the strength of the Titan brothers from Greek mythology, who lend their names to these sculptures.

The alabaster’s intricate veining and multilayered patterns resemble the swirling stars and cosmic dust in the space photographs I was mesmerized by as a child. My father, a NASA engineer, would bring home stacks of these images from his missions, which I taped across my bedroom walls and ceiling. The visual dialogue between stone and space—between Earth and the universe—captivated my imagination then, as it does now.

In these works, the delicate, twisting folds in the alabaster blur the boundaries between the terrestrial and the celestial. The natural world becomes inseparable from the cosmic, revealing their shared complexity and beauty.” - Marcus Vinicius De Paula