"ROTAS OPERA" takes its title from the famous Sator Square—an ancient Latin word square and palindrome that reads the same forwards, backwards, and in multiple directions. The complete square reads: SATOR / AREPO / TENET / OPERA / ROTAS, which translates approximately to "The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort." This cryptic palindrome, found carved in ancient Roman ruins from Pompeii to England, has fascinated scholars, mystics, and theologians for centuries.
The painting visualizes this mysterious inscription as a cosmic machine or celestial mechanism. A complex wheel-like structure—part organic, part mechanical—tumbles through a sky of luminous clouds. The form suggests ancient gears, cosmic wheels, agricultural implements, and biological structures simultaneously. Golden bands and curves interweave with purple-brown mechanical elements, all flowing with a sense of perpetual motion and transformation.
The wheel structure seems to be both emerging from and dissolving into the cloudscape, suggesting the interpenetration of the mechanical and the ethereal, the cosmic and the earthly. Flowing ribbons or tendrils extend from the main structure, perhaps representing the spreading of seeds (connecting to SATOR—the sower) or the unfolding of divine creation.
The painting captures the essence of the Sator Square's mystery: it's a structure that works in multiple directions simultaneously, a sacred geometry that contains hidden meanings, a cosmic mechanism that governs both the cycles of agriculture and the wheels of heaven. The baroque dynamism of the composition—reminiscent of Tiepolo's celestial visions—gives this ancient Christian-mystical symbol a fresh vitality.