Roman opalca (Hocquincourt, France, 1931–Roma, 2011) He is a Polish artist born in France, where he returned and installed definitively in 1977. From 1965 He dedicated himself to making a series of paintings, that titled Detail, in which he painted blank correlative figures on dark canvases always of identical measure, 196 x 135 cm. Began counting-pinto from scratch and in 1972 I had already reached the figure of 1 million. At that time he incorporated a decisive change in his process. In each new painting it began to include a 1% White in the base color, so that over the years the bottom tones were approaching, increasingly clear, to painted numbers, Always white. When he died he had reached the figure 5607249.
Joan Sebastián begins his project After Opalka right where he left him, In the figure 5607250 y, in doing so, borrow an idea, And even a world, that manages to do his own. This use of the Opalkian process is not a mere appropriate gesture characteristic of contemporary art, but a kind of figurative personality unfolding; A palpable fact that it is work, the work, The project ... those who can choose the artist.
Álvaro de los Ángeles (extract)
