Julian Opie

Julian Opie was born in London in 1958 and lives and works in London. He graduated from the Goldsmiths School of Art, London in 1982.

Julian Opie's work is recognised around the world. With public commissions and international museum exhibitions from New York to Seoul, London to Calgary, Opie's distinctive formal language is instantly recognisable and reflects his artistic preoccupation with the concept of representation and the way images are perceived and understood. "Everything you see is a trick of light," says Opie. "Light enters your eyes, light casts shadows, creates depth, shape, and colour. When you switch off the light, everything disappears. We use sight as a means of survival, and it's essential for us to take it for granted, but awareness allows us to look at what we see and, by extension, to look at ourselves and be aware of our existence. Drawing, painting the way the process feels and works, brings awareness to the present, to the real world, to the outside world."

Always exploring a range of techniques, both cutting-edge and ancient, Opie reinterprets the vocabulary of everyday life to explore ways of seeing, and his reductive style evokes a visual and spatial experience of the world around us. Influenced by classical portraiture, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Japanese woodblock prints, public signage, information boards, and traffic signs, the artist bridges the clean visual language of contemporary life with the fundamentals of art history.