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Artist or Maker: Roman Opalka (b. 1931)
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Exhibited: Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, L'Art et le temps, regards sure la quatrième dimension, November 1984-January 1985.
Bremen, Neues Museum Weserburg, Roman Opalka Spur der Zeit, March-June 1992.
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Notes: French artist Roman Opalka has been exclusively painting "time" since 1965. His paintings do not use symbols, clocks or calendar dates, but rather a sequence of numbers, counted in his native Polish tongue, to represent the passing of time. Each painting is more or less the same; canvas size as well as text or digit size never changes. Each painting is finished in one day, and upon its completion Opalka photographically records his face and phonetically records the event on a tape recorder. The present lot dates from the first year of the artist's lifelong project.
"In my attitude, which constitutes a program for my lifetime, progression registers the process of work, documents and defines time.
Only one date appears, 1965, the date when the first "detail" came into being, followed by the sign of infinity, as well as the first and last number of the given "detail".
I am counting progressively from one to infinity, on "details" of the same format ("voyage notes" excluded), by hand, with a brush, with white paint on a grey background, with the assumption that the background of each successive "detail" will have 1 more white than the "detail" before it. In connection with this, I anticipate the arrival of the moment when "details" will be identified in white on white" (Opalka, quoted in Opalka 1965/1-8, Munich 1980, unpaged).
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
Artist's Resale Right ("droit de Suite"). If the Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer also agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist"s collection agent.
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