Background
Julian Opie was born on December 12, 1958 in London, into the family of Roger G. and Norma Opie.
Goldsmiths College in London
Julian Opie was born on December 12, 1958 in London, into the family of Roger G. and Norma Opie.
Opie studied from 1979 to 1982 at the Goldsmiths College in London.
In 1983 Julian Opie began working with sheet steel, which he shaped into various geometrical figures, put together and painted on in color. In those wall objects made of steel, the physicality, mass and volume of the phenomenon submerged. Therefore, they could be abstract and read in the sense of an illusion, not as a body that spreads real in space. He had a first exhibition of his works in 1983 in Nicholas Logsdails Lisson Gallery in London. Already in 1984 Wulf Herzogenrath became aware of him and exhibited his work (together with those of Tony Cragg) in the Cologne Kunstverein. In 1995 Julian received the Sargant Fellowship of the British School at Rome and the 1995/1996 scholarship of the Atelier Calder in Saché, France.
In his series of portraits begun in 1997, he used a computer program to reduce facial features with black contours to the essentials, without losing the characteristic individuality of the person depicted. A popular example of those portraits is the cover design of an album by British band Blur ("Best of Blur). The characteristic facial features of the persons seem to stand out even more clearly through the striking simplification. He received an award from the Music Week CADS for best illustration "Best of Blur."
In more recent works, Opie introduces the movement into those reduced personal representations as a new moment. This is "Kiera" (2002) or "Bryan walking" (2004) show minimalist figures that are in a permanent movement and yet are not moving. For this work, Opie works with large flat screens or displays, on which the computer-controlled animations show a permanent, flowing movement. A surrealistic effect results from the spacelessness of the presentation, which has the surround of the displays as the only spatial reference. The animation "Lyndsey talking" (2004) uses language as a new design element. The schematic representation of the persons in the painting and the animations can be understood as a transformation of the persons to products. In 2005, the rock band U2 showed on their Vertigo tour a walking human as an LED representation in their stage show.
Opie achieved his first international recognition with his colored steel objects at "Documenta 8" in 1984. Numerous exhibitions in renowned galleries and museums followed, including Biennale Venice in 1993, Lenbachhaus Munich in 1999, Tate Britain in 2000, London, and K21 Art Collection North Rhine-Westphalia in Dusseldorf in 2003. Julian Opie currently lives and works in London.
Opie first became noted in the 1980s for sculpture in steel in which the surface and colours of the objects were represented semi-illusionistically in vigorously handled paint. As a painter he has developed a readily recognizable style, with simple hard black outlines and dots for eyes. This gained wider public recognition when in 2000 he designed an album cover for the pop group Blur. In 2008 he designed the ballet Infra for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Julian Opie married Lisa K. Milroy in 1984.
