ONE SELF PORTRAIT EVERY DAY in 2020 : 321

 Roman Opalka painted numbers from 1965 until his death in 2011. He painted consecutive numbers from 1 working his way up to infinity. He would paint the canvas black and paint the numbers white starting on the top left-hand corner and ending on the bottom right. Each time he started a new canvas he would add a drop of white paint to the background black, at the beginning this would be imperceptible but gradually the canvas would get lighter and at infinity the numbers would become invisible, white on white. At the end of each evening he would take a mugshot of himself in front of the painting he was working on and it is interesting to see both, his hair and the numbers behind him gradually fading away. His work was about time and death.

Conceptually I love this work but I wouldn’t be able to work on the same project for ever, it would drive me crazy. This project I am doing now, I AM STILL ALIVE, has a finite time and ends on the 31st of December 2020 (or earlier if I give up or die) but I have a few open ended projects on to go. 

I have my coffee book project where I formalise drinking coffee with friends but it’s not pressured as I don’t have to include every coffee and I sometimes forget about it for a couple of years and then carry on from where I left it. Opalka’s final number painted was 5,607,249. I am currently on coffee number 439.

“A post-card from Herzog Dellafiore” is an ongoing project which I started in 2006 and I have proposed during various events. Post-cards from Herzog originally cost £3 (it has gone up to £5 because of inflation) and the buyer would receive a post-card full of insults signed by Herzog. Each post-card would be different and personal. The first and only one I sold during these almost 15 years is this one shown in the photo. Ian Bilbey told me that the post-woman who delivered the post-card was quite shocked.

I AM STILL ALIVE

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