JULIAN OPIE, THE GALLERY STAFF 5, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT ON GLASS, EDITION OF 20, 2010
Taken from Julian Opie’s The Gallery Staff series from 2010, The Gallery Staff 5 is a print on glass that shows three men and two women holding various poses in profile. The figures in this work are silhouettes, each rendered in all black against the transparent background, enclosed in a black frame.
Throughout The Gallery Staff series Opie uses a set of motifs to vary the poses of each figure in the compositions. The motifs used in each print are two chairs, a rose and a book. Each character is dressed in formal wear and interacts with these objects in a different way as the series progresses.
The Gallery Staff 5 explicitly engages with the 19th century art historical tradition of silhouette portraiture, led by artist Auguste Edouart, whereby the new middle classes would commission family group or individual portraits to record a moment in time. Opie has a strong interest in noticing silhouettes everywhere and has said of the genre, “It is one of the most common forms of drawing around, certainly in that period from late 18th to early 20th century. It’s so common it has become boring, and it’s kind of boring anyway in the sense that it does not stray much from reality.”
Read more about The Gallery Staff 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.
