Roman Opalka

Painter and photographer Roman Opalka is best known for his lifelong project, 1965/1 to Infinity (1965-2011), in which he painted white numbers in long rows across a gray background. “The fundamental basis of my work, to which I have dedicated my life, manifests itself in a process of recording a progression that both documents time and also defines it,” he says. As Opalka ran out of space on each canvas he would continue on to the next one. Over the course of his series, he began taking self-portraits and reciting the numbers into a tape recorder upon the completion of each canvas. He also slowly started adding more white to the background with each successive painting, intending to tie the unfolding of the artist’s life and aging process to the transcription of time on his canvases.