On Kawara, One Milion Years, Roman Opalka, 1965/1- oo, 10 May 2016 — 30 Aug 2016
Exhibitions

On Kawara, One Milion Years, Roman Opalka, 1965/1- oo

On Kawara was born in 1933 in Japan and died in 2014 in New York. He was a mix media artist affiliated with conceptualism and mail art.

With the beginning of 1966 he begin the series of paintings “Today”, which he continued for the following 5 decades. He died in the middle of preparations of a big retrospective exhibition at Guggenheim Museum in New York. The cycle of minimalistic “Today” paintings, in which the artist painted the current date on monochromatic background is an expression of intellectual and artistic attitude of the artist. He records, according to a strictly specified rules the passing time, materialising one of the rules of Zen: “Who lives day after day, lives more precisely” Each painting had to be finished before the midnight and the painted time had to be in the local language, with the use of Roman numbers and latin alphabet. At the same time he worked on a mail art project between 10th May 1968 and 17th September 1979. Each day the artist posted a postcard on which apart from the address of the receiver and sender contained information about the time he woke up, where he went and whom he met. This minimalistic diary is referred to as the trilogy „I Got Up”, „I Met”, „I went” and was later published in 12 volumes.

Another work of importance is “One Million Years”, a monumental epic story which begun in 1969, closed initially in 20 volumes. It consists of 1 million years in two parts: years 998031 before Christ up to 1969 titled “Past” and 1996 to 1 001 995 titled “Future”. The first part is dedicated to all who passed away and the second part to ‘the last one’. In 1999 a new two volume version was created. One Million Years might as well be the most important of On Kawara’s projects as it speaks directly of what is.

Roman Opalka was born in 1931 in France and died in 2011 in Italy. He graduated from the Fine Art Academy in Warsaw in 1956. He is most renowned for the cycle: Opatka 1965/1 to infinity, referred to by the artist as programme. The artist started the project with painting ‘1’ with white paint on the black painted canvas measuring 196×135 cm. From then on the artist wrote lines of numbers, gradually lightening the background of his painting. At the same time he spoke out each of the numbers recording his voice on a tape. With each finished painting he took a self-portrait.
The flow of time became recorded in both the visual and the audio. “For a long time i had wanted to begin creating a work being rigorous in the highest degree, but it was only in 1965 when I manged to structuralise my thoughts and create a plan meeting this desire of precision” — spoke the artist about his work. It is just during the exhibition that all these elements create the right environment, which according to the artist is a recreation of identification of art and life. The rule of harmony and permanent regularity became concrete in the idea of the everyday, progressive counting. In other conditions, when it was impossible to paint his “Detail” Opalka created drawings of “cards from travels”. He became faithful to his idea until the end of his life, carrying a very contemporary message about passing away and transience of life. The first „Detail” is in the collection of the Museum of Art in Lodz, the following in the most esteemed museums worldwide and private collections.
The works at the exhibition come from the collection of Signum Foundation and are presented for the first time in a configuration of these two artists (On Kawara, Roman Opalka). Curator Grzegorz Musiat Exhibition open 10th of May till 30th of August

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