Roman Opalka

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Numerical Destiny

Roman Opalka was a French-born Polish painter (August 27, 1931 – August 6, 2011). Opalka painted millions of numbers over the course of more than 45 years.

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Painting consecutive numbers from 1 to infinity.
Numbers in horizontal rows.
Starting in the top left-hand corner of the canvas and finishing in the bottom right-hand corner.
Numbers that would progress from one canvas to the next for the duration of his life…

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“I inscribe the progression of numbers beginning with one, proceeding to infinity, on canvases of the same size, 77.17 x 53.15 in (196 x 135 cm)… After each work session in my studio, I take a photograph of my face in front of the “Detail” that I have been working on. Each “Detail” is accompanied by a tape recording of my voice saying the numbers out loud as I write them.”

Opalka, The Painter of Infinity: 1965/1 — ∞

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Roman Opalka, The Conceptual Artist

“All my work is a single thing, the description from one to infinity…”

Roman Opalka wrote in 1987: “We are at the same time alive and in the face of death – that is the mystery of all living beings.”

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A Single Thing, A Single Life…

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“Time as we live it and as we create it embodies our progressive disappearance.”

Read More: Keep changing, Connect with everything, Continue forver… Tatsuo Miyajima conceptual Art

Author Bio

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Editor in Chief Mehdi Chourou