Colin Roche

Roman au miroir (Sisyphe ŕ ma table) Colin Roche

It was in 2014, in Lodz, that I saw Detail 1 from Opalka for the first time. I gazed at it for some hours, as the days went by, so that it could become rooted deep within myself. And then, overcome with fear of not being able to see it forever, I took some pictures of details. Details from Detail, if I may say so. Protected by a plate glass, the canvas invited me in the picture. So that I was back from Poland with a self-portait against my will. Maybe it is a happy coincidence, I thought. In the way Opalka paints this infinite series of figures all over his life, there is something like a Sisyphus way, it is an obvious fact. And this is not that much about a Sisyphus in torture, but more about Albert Camus' Sisyphus: «the struggle itself toward the top is enough to fill up a man's heart. We have to imagine Sisyphus happy.»