Roman Opałka

In 1965 Roman Opałka embarked on a life-long project to represent one rather simple idea: to paint in ascending sequence the numbers from 1 to infinity. In other words, the task was to represent infinity through the finite tools he had at hand: from his own aging body, which he would photograph at the end of each working day, to the duration of the paint on a brushstroke, and, of course, to the numbers that allowed duration to become visible as he painted and recorded counting them. Although the overall rational path he had calculated for the project never changed, Opałka did adjust his methodology: the background changed from black to gray and became whiter by 1% with each painting, dissolving, ideally at the end of the artist’s life, into the blank canvas he had started with.

On this painting, or “detail,” as he referred to them, the artist counted 14,014 numbers. The year was 2000 and some 260,346 numbers before his final number, painted on the day of his death. Counting backward, to the day he began the Details, if we assume that on average he painted 24,000 numbers per painting, the result would be around 233 paintings in 46 years. If we were to hang them all on one wall, with a 15cm gap between them, they would take up about 550 meters (the paintings were all 196 x 135 cm), the length of the road from Moscow to Voronezh.

SK