Roman Opalka and Realizing Infinity

Roman Opalka considered his life's work as a single "thing," that being his honest attempt at realizing the physical construction of infinity. The concept of the infinite has daunted many artists, Opalka bears similarity in process to Mark Rothko, through his massive-scale untitled canvases, which burden the audience with considering the beauty that lies in monotony. The process of visualizing the infinite is, at its best, a grueling effort in creating a work that transcends your own life, one that may only be appreciated long after you're gone. Rothko's "Untitled" series is similar, if not less representational, to Opalka's OPALKA 1965/1 to infinity. Although both Opalka and Rothko made a sudden transition from easily representational processes to abstracted works, particularly oriented towards size and process, Opalka reduces lived experiences to their most rudimentary aspect of an order of numbers, in a way a religion of numbers. In his interpretation, the greatest part of life is its repetition, which might make some people uneasy. It makes me question the meaning of the rituals I endure: how often do you put effort into something simply for the sake of it? Like you owe something to the memory of an action, whether or not continuing the ritual creates any noticeable change in your environment. Opalka's "Details" series, in seeking to invent infinity, seems to find comfort in the consistency of numbers as unchanging to the criticisms or unrest of the world. Considering how the ego of the artist motivates the process, Opalka's "Details" series is completely devoid of any reflection of his identity or artistic influences. Typically, we may think of creating art as facilitating a kind of response from the public; however, "Details" feels like an increasingly solitary exercise, the denser that it becomes, as Opalka doesn't seem interested in a public interpretation of what's representative of infinity. As the series progressed, there was a gradual shift in both the tone of the canvas and the painted number, marking a subtle passage of time before effectively blending into the background completely, an opportunity to be forgotten and a challenge for both the audience and the artist in noticing change. The final number painted in the series was 5,607,249 with 233 instances of "Details". Although infinity isn't as easily definable, Opalka considered 7,777,777 to constitute a life's devotion. The number also represents what Opalka considered the final tonal shift so that by the time he reached this number, the paint would be completely indistinguishable from the canvas. He never reached his definition of infinity despite devoting so much of his life to this repetition. Although the series was never finished, it was constructed in such a way that its incompleteness seems to only add to the aesthetic quality. Perhaps there's a less rigid definition than that of infinity as something physically eternal. Infinity as an example of devotion, infinity as a life without regret.