Marcovici published analyses of Replica Technomarine watches financial markets and managed funds until he sold the business at the age of 23.Active in the field of software development, Marcovici is also the originator of many inventions, and holds international patents ranging from climbing equipment and bicycle gears to trading systems and electronic payment systems.In 2001, Marcovici sold his companies to begin his career in arts and works as he calls it.At the same time, he started a side business on eBay that would eventually become the world’s largest power-selling enterprise on eBay.At its peak his company had 80 employees and a turnover of 30 million euros a year.In early 2005, however, the company went bankrupt, and Marcovici lost all of his money in the process.There was a silver lining to the loss though, as Marcovici has stated “”there is no way to (mate)realize all the plans and projects I have on my mind in one lifetime- I can only pick the best and feasible”.The loss of his money led Marcovici free to pursue the very best of his artistic ideas.With the Rolex project, Marcovici hoped to express a concrete image of time so that the viewer may understand the reality of a human lifespan.A smaller pallet within the Replica Technomarine watches installation features missing bags and represents the time that Michael Marcovici has remaining, 42 years, while abstracting Marcovici’s present age of 39 years.Marcovici chose the Rolex time sand for his installation because of the renowned company’s reputation for precision and reliability.What better way to count the hours of your lifetime, than with a Rolex?
If you have ever wondered what it is that makes an hourglass so accurate then here is your answer — Rolex Sand for hourglasses.It makes perfect sense that Rolex would package the sand for hourglasses; what other company has the extensive history of precision and quality that has come to define Rolex.And so what other sand would Artist Michael Marcovici have chosen for his Rolex project, a physical display of the span of a lifetime, but the sand produced by the world’s most accurate watchmaker.Artist Michael Marcovici’s work relies heavily on symbolic effigies, enormous amounts of countable things stacked to give physicality to abstract realities.In a previous exhibition that was highly protected to say the least, he used hundred dollar bills to express the physical presence of a billion dollars, distancing the sum from its normative existence as an intangible figure.His Rolex exhibit displays 18 pallets of official Rolex brand time sand, stacked in such quantity as it would take to construct an hourglass measuring a human lifetime of 81 years.Each 30kg bag is the equivalent of sand necessary for 30 days through a standard hourglass.On the 18 pallets, there are 972 bags with a total weight of 29.160 kg (in total over 29,000 kg).Using the bags of Replica Technomarine watches sand Marcovici presents a physical possibility for 81 years — a generous estimation of an average lifetime.Michael Marcovici’s career, as both artist and businessman, is unusual in many ways.Born in Vienna in 1969, Marcovici quit school at 17 to begin his first business in the financial field.
