JULIAN OPIE, NEW YORK COUPLE 4, NEW YORK COUPLE SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 55, 2019
Taken from the artist’s New York Couple series from 2019, New York Couple 4 featuring two full-length portraits of people walking in the same direction. Set against a plain blue backdrop, the two figures are depicted in Opie’s trademark graphic style in bold lines, block colours and with circles as heads.
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 series is indicative of this investigation, with prints consisting of similar titles, each with the same vertical composition showing two full-length figures, each print depicting a different couple. Opie emphasises art as a commodity in his replication of post-industrial modes of production and exposes the dehumanising effects of computer technology.
New York Couple 4 is indicative of Opie’s interest in people and the human form, representing these figures with the minimum features by which they can be recognised as an image. Both figures walk with their hands in their pockets and walk with a relaxed gate, wearing dark casual clothing. It is this attention to detail in clothing and pose, rendered through a simplified visual language, that Opie can portray personalities in a distinctly modern pictorial style.
Read more about the New York Couple series 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.
