Julian Opie

Evoking both a visual and spatial experience of the world around us, Julian Opie’s distinctive visual language is instantly recognisable, with his animated walking figures, rendered with fine, minimal detail. The multidisciplinary artist reflects his artistic preoccupation with the idea of representation and the means by which images are perceived and understood. 

Born in London in 1958, Opie was raised in Oxford where he attended The Dragon School and then Magdalen College School. He graduated from Goldsmith University of London in 1982. His early practice consisted of painted steel sculptures using found objects and industrial materials. More recently, his reductive work has expanded into painting and installation, inspired by a variety of different influences including classical portraiture, pop art, traditional Japanese woodblock and public signage. The artist connects the visual language of modernism with the fundamentals of art history. 

The reductive, minimalistic style of Opie’s work plays with the different ways of seeing through reinterpreting the vocabulary of everyday life. The depersonalisation of figures, evokes the disconnected representation of oneself in a growing digital age. Often working from photographs of busy streets and crowds of people, he then obscures these figures in order to capture the essence of unique identity. ‘Suzanne Walking’ generates a pared-back perspective of an everyday act, such as walking, using a thick outlined silhouette of a woman erected through a lenticular acrylic panel. 

Opie has worked with LED sculpture and presented many public projects in cities around the world, including a permanent installation in Carnaby Street, London. One of Julian Opie’s most notable commissions has been for the design of an album cover for the British Pop band, Blur, which he then received a Music Week CADS award for. His work is included in several public collections, including the Tate Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.