New York Couple 7
New York Couple 7
Signed Print
Julian Opie
Screenprint, 2019
Signed Print Edition of 55
H 125cm x W 91cm
Critical Review
New York Couple 7 is a print from Julian Opie’s New York Couple series from 2019 that shows an image of two full-length figures walking in the same direction. The figures are dressed in formal looking clothes, indicating the way in which this couple represent a ‘type’ that Opie is trying to portray.
Using photography and digital technology to produce these prints, Opie’s New York Couple series combines the personal and the impersonal in his depiction of people. Reducing these figures to their most essential lines and colour palettes, Opie strives to form a universal mode of expression as a means to fully grasp reality. In creating depersonalised signs out of photographs of real people, Opie provides the viewer with space to project their own emotions and experiences onto this image.
Opie’s desire to achieve a universal form of realism in New York Couple 7 is also made clear by his endless repetition of variations on the same subject across an entire series. Since the mid-1990s, Opie has explored the principles of modular variation across artistic media and art historical genres. The artist’s New York Couple consists of prints with similar titles and with the same vertical composition showing two full-length figures, each print depicting a different couple.
