Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Peter Noever. Text by Timothy Clark, Sandy Nairne.
Known for his cool, clean, comics-inspired pictorial language, Julian Opie has been one of the leading figures in contemporary British art since the early 1980s. Equally at home in museum settings--like Tate Modern, the ICA Boston and MCA Chicago, where he has mounted recent one-person exhibitions and projects--and in collaboration with mainstream rock bands like Blur and U2, his work crosses media and genres with quiet, computer-assisted abandon. In the early days, Opie transgressed the boundaries between painting and sculpture by applying paint to the everyday articles he used in his steel objects. More recently he has experimented with digital technologies in the applied arts. Now, he is probably best-known for his hypnotically low-tech moving images generated by LCD and LED technologies. This volume assembles a representative collection of portraits, half-length figures and new works that draw from the motifs of baroque portraiture.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. Essays by Lucius Grisebach and Melitta Kliege.
What I would really like to do is make a painting and then walk into it, says British-born artist, Julian Opie. Opie has developed his images via the computer since the early 90s, yet reality has continued to remain his model. His objects of houses or automobiles--although reduced to their essential features and distinctly scaled down in size--are based on authentic buildings and cars. In this way, Opie transforms individual objects into universal signs. The inspiration for his repertoire of motifs, as well as his depictive style, he gets from life around him: public places, streets, airports, and shops, and also from a trip to Bali. In this publication, an essay by Opie himself gives first-hand insight into his artistic process, while a sequence of full-page illustrations, gives a comprehensive view of the different thematic facets in the artist's work.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Artwork by Julian Opie. Text by Daniel Kurjakovic.
Composed of his characteristically simplified lines and shapes, Julian Opie's portraits are rendered through computer technology. Beginning with a photograph scanned into a computer, the artist uses software to edit the images and hone in on their graphic essentials. The fascinating results become icons that serve to identify the individuals with the least information possible. Whereas most of Opie's portraits feature unknowns, people drawn from his personal life, some commissioned works feature public figures like Kate Moss or Michael Schumacher. But, by identifying them in the titles only by their first names, Opie zaps these celebrities of their fame and mythic status, simplifying them down to the familiar, human shape of their faces. Portraits comes complete with a "create your own cover image" binding and a selection of miniature stickers of portraits that can be tipped onto the front cover. Published in conjunction with Codax Publisher.
Julian Opie
Julian Opie: Portraits 1997-2002