
Julian Opie
Ireland • 1958
Presentation
Julian Opie is a contemporary British artist born in London in 1958. His studio is in London, in the Shoreditch area.
The artist grew up in Oxford. He has studied at the Dragon School and the Magdalen College School in Oxford, and graduated from the Goldsmiths College. His early success with galleries motivated young artists, such as Damien Hirst, to take the same road.
His work, inspired by Patrick Caulfield or Michael Craig-Martin, plays with the (computer-aided) reduction of photos to figurative representations. In his portraits, the faces are characterized by stong black traits, surfaces of color and minimal details; the eyes, for example, are reduced to a little black dot representing the pupil.
His series "Imagine you are…" shows how simple activities such as driving, walking or climbing can be represented by simple reductions. Opie also employs sculptures and light installations in order to represent objects of everyday life. He became known to the public in 2000, when he produced the cover for the album Best of Blur and the visuals for U2's Vertigo world tour, displaying walking figures on a stage set LED screen.
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Who is the artist?
Julian Opie is a contemporary British artist born in London in 1958. His studio is in London, in the Shoreditch area.
The artist grew up in Oxford. He has studied at the Dragon School and the Magdalen College School in Oxford, and graduated from the Goldsmiths College. His early success with galleries motivated young artists, such as Damien Hirst, to take the same road.
His work, inspired by Patrick Caulfield or Michael Craig-Martin, plays with the (computer-aided) reduction of photos to figurative representations. In his portraits, the faces are characterized by stong black traits, surfaces of color and minimal details; the eyes, for example, are reduced to a little black dot representing the pupil.
His series "Imagine you are…" shows how simple activities such as driving, walking or climbing can be represented by simple reductions. Opie also employs sculptures and light installations in order to represent objects of everyday life. He became known to the public in 2000, when he produced the cover for the album Best of Blur and the visuals for U2's Vertigo world tour, displaying walking figures on a stage set LED screen.
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