First solo exhibition at a Japanese art museum in eleven years

This is the first large-scale solo exhibition of Julian Opie’s art at a Japanese art museum in eleven years. His 2008 show at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito secured Opie’s popularity in Japan. The name Julian Opie may still bring to mind truly simple portraits from the period from the latter half of the 1990s to the first half of the 2000s, rendered with clearly defined outlines and eyes depicted with black dots that nevertheless properly convey the individuality and personality of the model. Recently, however, Opie has been producing a wide variety of art, including paintings and films showing people walking on city streets, three-dimensional works depicting groupings of city buildings and crows, country landscapes, sculptures of sheep, and works of people jogging. This exhibition presents the Julian Opie of today, and consists mainly of new works selected by the artist himself, including paintings, sculptures, and films that are being seen in public for the first time.

The ultimate simplification of the human figure

Moving on from his earlier portraits showing only the head, many of Opie’s recent works depict full human figures viewed from the side. Although they continue to be portrayed using clearly defined outlines and simple, translucent colours, the tendency towards reduction and simplification is more pronounced, with the head depicted simply as a circle. Similarly, the titles are also simplified, with a work showing a man with a tattoo entitled Tattoo, a woman walking with headphones called Headphones, and a woman walking with a mobile phone in her hand described as Phone. The complete abstraction of depiction and title produces a portrayal of a universal figure that one could see in any city on the planet.