Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Art Daily: the art of Julian Opie

In art, I tend to focus on Australian art because I know it best, it resonates me and I can set it in context. I am less familiar with international art, certainly current international art. Here I tend to dip, looking at artists or works that have somehow become relevant to a current interest. It makes for a very patchwork quilt effect.

I mention this now because I have taken out a subscription (its free) to Art Daily. Yes, I realise that I already get too much stuff. At the moment, my in tray still has 1,456 items, and that's after clearing over 1,000 emails this week. But its rather fun.

This illustration shows works by Julian Opie featured at San Francisco's Jenkins Johnson's Winter Salon exhibition. I quote:
On view are his series Tourists; Walking in the Rain; and his lenticular series Walking In London 1 and 2. Opie is one of the most significant artists of his generation whose work is immediately identifiable. His pieces examine how we, as viewers, see things. His portraits, sculptures, and reliefs provide a way of depicting the world in which he balances the nuanced styles of Western Art with graphic traditions of caricature, illustration, and even cartoon. In the Opie style of graphic minimalism yet acutely descriptive, these series render figures in bold black outlines, capturing the personality of each. The series Tourists (screen printed with hand painting) depict telling portraits of people who might have just walked by on the street. While the works Walking in the Rain, London and Walking in the Rain, Seoul give the impression of being immersed on a busy urban sidewalk, bustling with noise. We will also feature his lenticular prints, a technique that utilizes multiple lenses to produce the illusion of depth and motion. The Walking in London lenticulars include figures such as Architect and Musician who shift in front of your eyes as you move in front of them.
I hadn't heard of Julian Opie, but he is clearly a leading British artist. His street scenes remind me somewhat of the Australian artist John Brack, although Brack belongs to a different period. Were I in San Francisco, I would certainly go to see Opie's work.    

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's not art. This is Art: https://vimeo.com/149327902

From the notes: Siting transient spaces such as entryways and public bathrooms, I perform with automated machines such as sliding doors, hand dryers and sinks - and - As a starting point, I play with this notion of invisibility by fluctuating between creating actions that trigger the sensors (an indication that the sensor “sees” me) and adjusting my actions to become invisible to the sensor.
Through this inquiry, I hope to discover new possibilities for collaborations with these everyday machines


3m54s to get through a sliding door, but wait! What about 11m36s of hand wringing?
https://vimeo.com/149324911

Can't wait to review these "new possibilities for collaborations". Eat your 'art out Julian :)

kvd



Jim Belshaw said...

Very strange, kvd. Where do you find these things? On the first, I thought that it illustrates how I might behave as a child, on the second it looks a useful test of the working of automatic dryers!

2 tanners said...

I love (hate) these explorations of self in completely meaningless and utterly egotistical terms. It doesn't look quite so good rephrased as:

"How I tricked a sliding door with a brain that makes a chicken look like Stephen Hawking"

Anonymous said...

Jim asks how do you find such things. I started with a sentence from the notes you quoted: "His pieces examine how we, as viewers, see things", and I wondered what that actually meant - i.e. how that might be possible, and what is the feedback of such examination?

I'm used to art created to shock (or maybe deride 'Art'?) - for instance: "Piss Christ" and Damien Hirst's 'shark' or Tracey Emin (not) in her bed, as examples.

Or maybe it is all just pretentious tosh by whoever was responsible for such wording - which is not necessarily the artist? So to answer your question, I then went searching for pretentious tosh.

But I must admit to some conflict regarding the 'sliding doors' thing: this was an important plot point in that film about Temple Grandin - a movie I very much admire for both the subject herself and the depiction by Claire Danes.

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

You made me grin, 2t! That's interesting kvd. I do the same, in fact, especially when looking for visual material. But I hadn't thought of using phrases in quite the way you do. That's definitely interesting.

I knew the movie Sliding Doors, but didn't know the Grandin movie. In fact, I had never heard of Temple Grandin. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin. So I learn't something new.