Roman Opalka '1965/1 - ∞'
September 8 - October 22, 2011
Opening: September 8, 2011 - 6-9pm

"My death is the logical and emotional proof of the completion of my work"
Roman Opalka

Axel Vervoordt Gallery presents a small, intimate exhibition dedicated to the work of Roman Opalka, who, unfortunately, died recently. The exhibition presents 4 “Détails”, a series of 12 self-portraits, a sound installation and two videos. They all bear witness to his extraordinary work, the methodical transcription of the passing of time, his life achievement to which he remained faithful. The artist himself declared: “My death is the logical and emotional proof of the completion of my work.”

In 1965, in his studio in Warsaw, Roman Opałka (August 27th 1931- August 6th 2011) 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 were painted in horizontal rows. Each new canvas, which the artist called a 'detail', took 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 – ∞"; the concept had no end, and the artist 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.” In 1968 Opałka introduced a tape recorder, speaking each number into the microphone as he painted it, and also began taking passport-style photographs of himself standing before the canvas after each day's work, a ritual bookkeeping of time passing. The process was endless, but measured against its goal – infinity – it is as naught: 'the problem is that we are, and are about not to be'.

Jacques Roubaud said: ‘Roman Opalka has done what a man couldn’t imagine doing to approach the idea of infinite, the infinite in the finite time, through non-discursive, non-mathematical, irreducibly personal but at the same time given to all of us."