JULIAN OPIE, YELLOW BLACK WHITE BLUE, STANDING PEOPLE SERIES, SIGNED LENTICULAR PRINT, EDITION OF 25, 2020
Showing an image of four figures standing in a row, Yellow Black White Blue is a print from Julian Opie’s Standing People series from 2020. The print is rendered in Opie’s highly recognisable graphic style, with his use of bold lines, simplified shapes and bright colour.
Set against a bright green backdrop, each figure is rendered in a different monochrome colour as indicated by the print’s title. The full-length figures stand casually, as though waiting for a bus and are depicted with blank circles as their heads. Anonymised by the Opie’s simplistic visual style, each figure is made unique with the attention to detail on clothing and their stances.
Repeating the same subject with variations across an entire series, Opie himself has described his work to be like ‘objects in an Ikea catalogue.’ Since the mid-1990s, Opie has explored the principles of modular variation across artistic media and subject matter. The Standing People series consists of similar titles, each with the same square format and showing four figures, different in every print. Opie emphasises art as a commodity in his replication of post-industrial modes of production and exposes the dehumanising effects of computer technology.
Read more about the Standing People 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.
