JULIAN OPIE
2007
110 x 66 x 12 cm
Edition of 4
Inv. Nr. 37
Photo: Studio Julian Opie
Born in 1958 in London, England
Lives and works in London, England
Julian Opie, the youngest of the New British Sculptors of the eighties including Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon or Anish Kapoor, cleverly uses computers in his art of portraiture. His way of representing the human figure is inspired by traffic signs, signage, and schematic representations. He was described as a “painter of modern life”, a life in which the real and the virtual, the artificial and the authentic, feelings and logos are all mixed up. Opie’s figures explore the tension between general and specific reality and the artist uses his own line drawings of real people to create the pictures. His portraits transform individual subjects into universal signs, questioning the genre of portraiture itself, ranging from still images to moving animations created in videos on LCD screens, LED technology or lenticular acrylics in which the figures appear to move when viewed from different angles. Ann, Blinking is a perfect example of this illusion game between the immobility of representation and the movement of the living, thanks to the subtly differing rhythms of the movement in the eyes of the model. The artist is interested in reality, not as a photographic record of a past moment, but as a true reality of references, memory, sensory experience and representation. The pole dancer called Shahnoza is a recurring theme in Opie’s work. This series depicting the lithe and sensual club girl started as an answer to Henry Moore’s reclining nude sculptures – the Art Gallery of Ontario invited the artist to make wall paintings for the Henry Moore Pavilion in 2006.