JULIAN OPIE, KRIS WALKING, KRIS SERIES, SIGNED LENTICULAR PRINT, EDITION OF 60, 2011
Created with a lenticular panel so as to form a moving image, Kris Walking is a print by Julian Opie from 2011 and is typical of his full-length figurative style. This print shows a man with long dark hair walking, depicted in Opie’s structured, graphic language.
Throughout his career, Opie has produced many images of people walking in the form of static prints, paintings, sculpture, and moving images. Using photographs taken by the artist, each print is then manipulated and reduced to a matter of simplified shapes and signs to represent a figure. Producing anonymous ‘passers-by’ with which to populate his world, Opie’s figures are not devoid of personality thus maintaining a sense of individuality within multiplicity. The figure in Kris Walking is defined by his long hair and clothing and is thus reduced to a ‘type’ that prompts the viewer to think about how we relate and resemble one another.
Kris Walking is indicative of Opie’s interest in using computer technology as a key component to his work, producing a moving image through lenticular printing. Opie is interested in movement as means to differentiate between people and as a way to strike the balance between stylisation and realism in his works. The movement in this image appears far more realistic than expected, despite the fact that the figure’s form is highly stylised and so Opie presents movement itself as a form of realism.
Read more about Kris by Julian Opie.
ABOUT JULIAN OPIE
British artist Julian Opie challenges traditional approaches to portraiture through his digitally designed and seemingly contradictory, depersonalised works. Working also with landscapes and cityscapes, Opie’s highly stylised work involves the reduction of photographs or short films into figurative reproductions created using computer software. The hallmarks of his artistic style are portraits and animated walking figures, rendered with minimal detail in black line drawing. Learn more about Julian Opie.
