#complex art

“La Reprise, Roman Opalka” belongs to a series of digital creations, titled as: “La Reprise” or ‘Remake’ with the idea of digitally recreating or reproducing the visual form that reveals a certain aspect of regenerating the process used by few famous artists on their iconic artwork.


“La Reprise - Roman Opalka, 1-5607249 & from black - white” is a digital recreation or reproduction of Roman Opalka’s lifetime work called, 1-∞ 1965. A series of 256 images called ‘Details’ presenting an increment of generated numbers ranging from 1 to 5697249. Each Detail here has a format of 196cm (h) x 135cm (w) - exactly as Opalk’s original work - using a white font in size 10, however each ‘Detail’ has a unique background colour, starting from Detail-001 in dark black (R=0, G=0, B=0; #000000) and culminating on a pure white background colour, as seen in Detail-255 (R=255, G=255, B=255; #ffffff). 


As observed through the series of images, the passage from a very contrasting and legible image (revealing white numbers embedded in a deep black background), towards a fading and illegible white on white situation, reveals an act of disappearance. This progressive degradation of the background colour shows a finite range of 256 possible grey tone values that can be obtained in an 8-bit RGB image, whilst also evoking Opalka’s attempt to achieve a ‘numerical infinity’ and a visual transcendence achieved by fading to white.