What We Fund

Yellow phone. (2023) and Turquoise hair. (2023) both derive from Opie’s Busan Walkers series of 2023. Rendered in high-gloss auto paint on aluminum, each depicts a figure in motion – a passerby originally photographed on the Busan seafront and subsequently translated into a drawing, which in turn served as templates for a series of twenty statues. A simplified profile view of a body has been enlarged – given volumetric depth – and yet the image remains studiedly two-dimensional. At once inhabiting the physical world and the virtual space, the figure in Yellow phone. (2023) expresses a quality – pervasive in Opie’s art – of demonstrative gesture and self-containment as he walks while looking at his phone. The young woman of Turquoise hair. (2023) adopts a more extravagant posture, flinging out one arm behind her to merge with her hair.

Artist Biography

Julian Opie is recognisable for his distinctive and refined graphic style, distilling the visual information of everyday life and reality to a universal language of symbols and signs. Rooted in Pop Art and Minimalism with a contemporary sensibility, his work spans paintings, prints, sculptures, and digital animations, including his iconic walking figures, which explore movement and identity. Always exploring different techniques both cutting edge and ancient, Opie plays with ways of seeing through reinterpreting the vocabulary of everyday life; his reductive style evokes both a visual and spatial experience of the world around us. Drawing influence from classical portraiture, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Japanese woodblock prints, as well as public signage, information boards and traffic signs, the artist connects the clean visual language of modern life, with the fundamentals of art history.

Julian Opie graduated in 1983 from Goldsmiths School of Art. He lives and works in London. He is part of the group known as New British Sculpture, alongside artists such as Anish Kapoor and Tony Cragg. Opie has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. He is represented by 12 galleries worldwide and has presented public projects in cities around the world, notably in the Dentsu Building in Tokyo 2002; City Hall Park in New York 2004, Mori Building, Omotesando Hill in Japan 2006; River Vltava in Prague 2007; Phoenix Art Museum USA 2007; Dublin City Gallery in Ireland 2008; Seoul Square in South Korea 2009; Regent’s Place in London 2011; SMETS in Belgium 2011; The Lindo Wing, St Mary’s Hospital, London 2012; and more recently permanent installations at PKZ in Zurich, Arendt and Medernach in Luxembourg; Taipei, Taiwan; Tower 535, Causeway Bay in Hong Kong; and WTC in Lisbon.