Curated by Ludovico Pratesi

The exhibition is open from 04 June to 29 October 2011

On the occasion of the 54th Venice Biennale, Galleria Michela Rizzo is pleased to present The Time of Painting, the personal exhibition of the Polish artist Roman Opalka, considered one of the main protagonists of international conceptual art. The exhibition, curated by Ludovico Pratesi, opens on Friday 3 June from 5.30 pm at the Galleria MicheleRizzo, Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, San Marco 2597 Venice.

"From 1965 the artist began a new phase of his research linked to the representation of irreversible time, starting to paint on the upper left corner of a rectangular black canvas, the number one in white: the first Détail, fragment of a project endless.

A symbolic gesture that would have conditioned his entire existence, spent representing the numerical sequence of his life, marked by the passage of time expressed through a succession of figures, which today has exceeded the number 5,500,000, and continues towards infinite. A classic rite, governed by an absolute semantic code in its objective precision: representing irreversible time in a total equivalence between art and life. " Ludovico Pratesi writes.

The Venetian solo exhibition of Opalka presents the Maestro's work in an exhaustive way, starting from the first détail on a dark background of the early years to the most recent works, almost completely white, accompanied by the sound recording of the artist's voice reciting the numbers as he paints them. Along with the paintings, the travel cards and photographic self-portraits are exhibited, thus allowing the public to get to know the artistic production of Opalka in its entirety.