Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Roman Opalka | 1965/1-∞






Roman Opalka
1965/1-∞
Berlin, Germany: Edition Block, 1977
12" vinyl LP
Edition of 400


In his mid-thirties, Roman Opalka began painting sequential numbers onto canvases, starting in the top left and corner and finishing in the bottom right. Each finished canvas was considered a "detail" of the larger conceptual practice, and a new canvas continued where he left off. 

"All my work is a single thing, the description from number one to infinity. A single thing, a single life", "the problem is that we are, and are about not to be," he said. 

All of the "details" have the same title, 1965 / 1 – ∞, as does this recording. Three years into the painting project the artist introduced a tape recorder to the process. In 1968, he began speaking each number into the microphone as he painted it. 

"Every "detail" is accompanied by a phonetic registration on a tape recorder and a photographic documentation of my face," he noted. 

This LP consists of forty-two minutes and fifty three seconds of the artist counting:

Side A Detail 1987108-2010495 22:10
Side B Detail 2136352-2154452 20:43

The disc was recorded 1976 in Berlin and the artist designed the cover and wrote the linter notes that appear in the gatefold sleeve. 

The record is alued at approximately $200 to $275, depending on condition. 

Opalka died on August 6th, 2011 at the age of 79. The final number he painted was 5607249.




1 comment:

  1. We will fix your credit; remove all negative items, clear loans, collections and hard inquiries and also raise your score to 760+ ASAP. These were the exact words from M. Jerry when I contacted him via JERRYLINKGROUP at GMAIL dot COM / 6265140620. I decided to give JERRYLINK CREDIT GROUP a try and to my greatest surprise it worked out for me. In less than 11days after all documentation; my score drastically increased to 810 across the three national credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion), I could no longer sight evidence of collections, negative marks, mortgage loan, collections and hard inquiries on my credit report. I honestly appreciate Mr. Jerry for fixing my credit.

    ReplyDelete