Roman Opałka - Citizendia

Roman Opałka (1931-) is a famous French painter of Polish origin. Year 1931 ( MCMXXXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. Poland (Polska officially the Republic of Poland

Roman Opalka

In 1965, In his studio in Warsaw, Roman Opalka, a French born painter of Polish origin, began painting a process of counting - from one to infinity. Starting in the top left-hand corner of the canvas and finishing in the bottom right-hand corner, the tiny numbers are painted in horizontal rows. Each new canvas, which the artist calls a 'detail', takes up counting where the last left off. Each 'detail' is the same size (196 x 135 cm), the dimension of his studio door in Warsaw. All details have the same title, 1965/1-00; the idea does not date although the artist has pledged his life to its execution: 'All my work is a single thing, the description from number one to infinity. A single thing, a single life. '

Over the years there have been some changes to the ritual. In Opalka's first details he painted white numbers onto a black background. In 1968 he changed to a grey background 'because its not a symbolic colour, nor an emotional one', and in 1972 he decided he would gradually lighten this grey background by adding 1 per cent more white to the ground with each passing detail. He expects to be painting virtually in white on white by the time he reaches 7 777 777, about a decade away at the current rate: 'My objective is to get up to the white on white and still be alive. '

In 1968 Opalka introduced a tape recorder, speaking each number into the microphone as he paints it, and he also began photographing himself standing before the canvas after each day's work, a ritual bookkeeping of time passing. The process is endless, but measured against its goal - infinity - it is as naught: 'the problem is that we are, and are about not to be'.

In 2007 Opalka participated at the symposium “Personal Structures Time-Space-Existence” a project initiated by the artist Rene Rietmeyer. Personal Structures is an international contemporary art platform which generates the possibility for artists and art historians to discuss philosophical concepts in Art. Rene Rietmeyer (born 1957 in Den Bosch) is a Dutch artist and the initiator of the international art project Personal Structures ( 2003)

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