Roman Opalka, Maria Teresa Sartori

Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice

May 7 - November 24, 2019

From 7 May to 24 November, the second chapter will involve the rooms of the Querini Stampalia Foundation House Museum, where the works of Roman Opałka and those of Mariateresa Sartori will be related to each other and to those of the institution's ancient collections.

Dire il tempo stems from the desire to deepen Roman Opałka's production through a selection of works that mark fundamental stages in his research, many of which have never been presented before in Italy or have never been exhibited, coming from important private and public collections, including the museum. Muzeum Sztuki of Łódź and above all the Fonds de Dotation Roman Opałka, with which a close collaboration was born in the conception of the project.

Both exhibitions will revolve around OPALKA 1965/1-∞, a research to which the artist has dedicated most of his life and of which the first and last Détail on canvas will be exhibited together for the first time ever: the first from Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź for the first time in Italy, and the last, left unfinished, never presented to the public and coming from Poland, and visible for the
a private collection.

Heart of the Franco-Polish artist's production, OPALKA 1965/1-∞ will be the fulcrum of the exhibition itinerary that will unfold between Milan and Venice covering the entire span of his activity, from the first works to the most recent, making the great I also publish lesser known aspects of his artistic research, but fundamental for his conceptual and linguistic formulation.

At the Querini Stampalia Foundation, alongside the representations on time by Roman Opałka, a nucleus of works by Mariateresa Sartori (Venice, 1961), an artist from another generation who had developed a deep friendship with Opałka, will be presented. Scattered along the path of the museum, Sartori's drawings and photographic images reveal the subtle and invisible textures determined by our movement in space and through time. At the center of the itinerary is the impressive installation The time of sound. Waves: a wall completely covered with sheets of paper on which the artist, with charcoal, translated the sound of the sea waves in real time into a visual form. The installation will resonate with Opałka's voice as he pronounces the numbers he is painting in Polish.