Roman Opalka's 'Dire il Tempo' Spans Milan and Venice

The exhibition 'Dire il Tempo' honors Polish artist Roman Opalka (1931–2011) through an unprecedented comprehensive reconstruction of his work, unusually split across two venues in different cities: Building Gallery in Milan and Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, the latter opening during the 2019 Venice Biennale preview. At Building Gallery, the show traces Opalka's lesser-known early career as a renowned engraver (e.g., 'Les Nuages, carnet d’étudiant', 1951) and his Informale movement studies, including the 'Studium natemat ruchu' series (1959–60) of crosshatched grids. In 1965, he created his first 'Détail'—white numbers on a dark gray canvas the size of his studio door, starting a lifelong process: each subsequent canvas lightened by 1% until white on white. In 1968, he added self-portrait photographs with the same expression; in 1972, voice recordings of him reciting numbers in Polish. His systematic project 'OPALKA 1965/1–∞' continued until his death. At Fondazione Querini Stampalia, the works are dispersed within the historic house-museum, notably pairing two 'Détail' canvases—the first (never realized, from Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź) and the last (number 5,607,249, from the Lenz Schönberg collection)—displayed together for the first time, facing each other as 'the white and the black, the Alpha and Omega' of Opalka's earthly journey.