Roman Opałka Oktogon, ŻAK ½BRANICKA Lindenstraße 35 berlin 10969, DE, by craniv boyd.

Roman Opałka Oktogon, ŻAK ½BRANICKA Lindenstraße 35 Berlin 10969, DE, by craniv boyd.

 

Oktogon is a celebration of a life that is devoted to conceptual art, an art which contains an almost religious hermetic zeal in the hands and installation of Roman Opałka current work Oktogon, at Polish gallery ŻAK½BRANICKA. Every one who visits the exhibition can if they chose take with them an exemplar of the mechanical reproduction printed on the exhibition invitation that comprises the building blocks for the work Oktogon.

 

Opałka and his newly octogenarian face are what are deliberately photographed in a dreamy milky white haze filter that adds an air of minimalist guru grace to a wizened face of a man who has doubtlessly committed himself to the life of an ascetic for the higher purpose of æsthetics, a man who employs the tactics of total art works with the humility or amicability of a zen garden. There is a repose in the gaze that Opałka emits forth through the announcement, the white shirt he wears in the photograph blends with his white hair which blends with his background the subtle grey scale that is the landscape of his face, cragged and crevassed not with lines of worry it appears but rather lines of living exudes a calmness matched with seriousness that few faces present. His face is one that is known yet unknown his neck is adorned with a chain of jewelery the white shirt with a white color is the kind of every mans button down shirt that may perhaps be the 1920's born generations version of subsequent the Hanes cotton tee shirt. Opałka's shirt is unbuttoned we from the position of the framing do not see how far unbuttoned his shirt is.

 

The grey scale of the photograph serves to reiterate and emphasize Opałka's age, codify the order of æsthetic appreciation we are to confer on the object and how different the en face dead pan mug shot type photo from a holding room that is well lit with a great camera. The descriptive photo graph could serve Opałka as a profile or head shot photograph yet some how Opałka's self staging and posing strikes a chord most earnest, he is author of an oeuvre marked by process and committed from a space and country that predate social networking forums on the Internet, communist Poland in the time after the second world war. The photograph if we were looking from the vantage point of a casting agent could be a possible sure type in the role of Homer in a classic period piece or of another blind seer type who sing of a distant future in epic form. This work the portrait foto and the eight sided figure created by the installation of these photos on poles painted white hanging down from the gallery ceiling give insight to work of an artist who is in it for the long term fulfillment through the creative act, making dry work that is in many ways akin to Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara. By craniv boyd.