LONDON.- Julian Opie (b.1958), one of Britain’s most important contemporary artists, unveiled sculptures, prints and animations made over the past few years in a major exhibition at the Alan Cristea Gallery, London, from 26 April - 16 June 2018.

Opie is an artist of contemporary life, using urban and rural landscapes, as well as moving figures, to bring time-honoured artistic genres into the twenty-first century. Working in a variety of media, Opie draws inspiration from both high art, design and the vernacular; lightbox advertising, billboard signs, Japanese Manga, seventeenth and eighteenth-century portraiture, nineteenth-century silhouettes, Roman busts and ancient Egyptian art.

A new edition of five screenprinted wooden skyscrapers, Modern Towers 1 - 3, 2017, which reference a series of works that Opie made in the 1990s, are being shown together with prints of office windows. Scenes of the Cornish coastline, including Gribbin Head, Lantic Bay and Polridmouth, have been printed digitally and mounted onto white acrylic blocks for new editions. Cornish Coast 1. and Cornish Coast 2., 2017, are reminiscent of the kind of displays and signage you might find at an airport or on a high street. These are being shown alongside large hanging banners, inspired by Japanese scroll paintings, depicting scenery captured by Opie on a train journey from Seoul to Busan in South Korea.

For a new series of relief prints Opie illustrates silhouettes of people walking around Melbourne, where he will have his first major solo museum exhibition in Australia in late 2018. These are being displayed together with hand-painted statuettes of walking figures, large screenprints of joggers entitled Runners, 2016, and bronze cast editions depicting standing figures. Profile heads are also presented as portraits using inlaid metal in black slate and limestone.

Opie comments, “I notice the way that things are made in the world, or rather certain ways of making jump out at me and seem vibrant and evocative. I see an LED sign in an airport or a Roman mosaic in the British Museum and the way the materials affect the representation seems strong and moving. The way humans twist and mould the world to create images, to mirror the way that we see and interpret the world is what engages me.” ¹

The instantly recognisable, universal language of Opie’s art has reached far beyond traditional gallery audiences. Sculptures and animated LED outlines of human figures are now presented across the world on city streets, be it on billboards or on the side of tower blocks. Opie’s printmaking and production of editions continues to play a central role in breaking down the barriers whether it be between painting and design or sculpture and mass produced objects. The Alan Cristea Gallery has been the exclusive worldwide publisher of Opie’s editions for over twenty years.

Major institutional exhibitions by Julian Opie open at F1963, Busan, South Korea from 24 March - 24 June 2018, and at the National Gallery Victoria, Melbourne, Australia in November 2018.

Julian Opie (b. 1958) lives and works in London.

Solo exhibitions include National Portrait Gallery, London, UK (2017), Suwon Ipark Museum, Suwon, South Korea (2017), Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, China (2017), Fundacion Bancaja, Valencia, Spain (2017), Krobath Vienna, Austria (2016), British High Commission, New Delhi, India (2015), Kunsthalle Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland (2015), SCAI The Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow, Poland (2014), Holburne Museum, Bath and Bowes Museum, Durham, UK (2014), National Portrait Gallery, London, UK (2011); Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain (2010); MAK, Vienna, Austria (2008); Kivik Art Centre, Osterlen, Sweden (2009); Museum Kampa, Prague, Czech Republic (2007); Public Art Fund City Hall Park, New York, US (2004), and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2001).

His work can be found in public collections worldwide including the Victoria & Albert Museum, British Museum, Tate, London; Neues Museum, Nuremberg; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Shikoku, Japan


¹ Interview with Julian Opie in Elle Deco, October 2017