JULIAN OPIE, TRUCK BIRDS WIND, EIGHT LANDSCAPES SERIES, SIGNED DIGITAL PRINT, EDITION OF 40, 2000
Truck Birds Wind is a digital print from Julian Opie’s Eight Landscapes series from 2000 that shows an image of a forest lit up by the moon. Each image in this series was mounted with sound systems, playing the sounds described by the title or digital LED panels displaying the words of the title one by one.
Truck Birds Wind shows a forest landscape that takes up around half of the composition, with the top half of the image filled with an empty blue sky and a small, shining moon. Much of Opie’s work has been compared to the digitally rendered landscapes of video games in the way that they mimic a simultaneously familiar yet otherworldly sphere.
This print was rendered from a digital photograph taken by Opie that is then scanned and altered digitally to reduce the detail of the original image, saturate the colours and flatten its form. Opie creates representation at its bare minimum, a scene devoid of human presence to form a depersonalised image from which the viewer can project their own experiences on to. Opie has said of this viewing experience: “what I would really like to do is make a painting and then walk into it.”
Read more about Eight Landscapes 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.
