Julian Opie’s distinctive reductive style draws from diverse influences including billboards, classical portraiture and sculpture, dance, Japanese woodblocks, and cartoons. His work comprises silhouettes, animations, LED animations, and simplified portraits and landscapes (such as Landscape? from 1998-99, a screen print of trees, grass, and sky in a flat pictorial rendering that recalls a child’s puzzle). Employing a variety of media and technologies to make “paintings” of his subjects, Opie distills everyday images and experiences into concise but evocative signs and pictograms.
