Julian Opie at the Lisson Gallery, London, 15 Oct - 15 Nov

Exhibition Description:

The Lisson Gallery will be presenting forty recent works by Julian Opie, an extensive articulation of his interest in the traditional genres of landscape painting and portraiture, and his engagement with art history. These works range in medium from painting and sculpture to liquid crystal display (LCD) screens and light emitting diodes (LEDs).

Opie draws inspiration from the contemporary world, constructing his refined, concise visual language, through which images of people, figures and landscapes are conjured, rendering them in his universally recognisable style. He uses simple signs and pictograms and expands them to evoke real people and places.

Description:

Image: Julian Opie
View of boats on lake Motosu below Mount Fiji from route 709, 2007
Computer film - double 46² LCD screen - PC (Diptych)
110 x 144 x 12 cm
Installation view: © JULIAN OPIE.
Recent Works, MAK, Vienna , 10 June – 21 September 2008
Photo: Dave Morgan
Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery

Included in this show are works from Opie's Eight Views of Japan (2007), a series of animations on double and triple LCD screens of Japanese landscapes based on a trip taken by the artist around Mount Fuji in Japan.

This series closely references Japanese art history, particularly 'pictures of the floating world' - paintings and prints of the Ukiyo-e school. Opie has taken much influenced from the graphic, pared down style of Utagawa Hiroshige and Kitagawa Utamaro, in whose work a seeming simplicity is attained from underlying complexity.

Julian Opie lives and works in London. He studied at Goldsmith's College of Art, graduating in 1982 and had his first solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery in 1983.

Opie has exhibited extensively internationally and his work is held by many significant international museum collections.

Full Contact Details:

Lisson Gallery 29 & 52-54 Bell Street, London, NW1 5DA
Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm; Sat 11am-5pm
Admission: Free

Nearest Tube Station: Edgware Road