JULIAN OPIE - A SPACE BETWEEN 2D AND 5G.
‘Bastide. 2 2022’, Lisson Gallery - LONDON Photographed by Arnan Wang.
Julian Opie - Bastide. 2 2022. Auto paint on aluminium and steel.
Through the gallery glass, 'Bastide. 2 2022', appears like a vinyl sticker - applied to a physical landscape, sharpie black against the bright paper white courtyard walls and the bustling life of an urban concrete, brick, and glass landscape behind.
Only the trees feel real in this surrealist set - bare branches amputated, fingerless limbs - ready to sprout a new - a skeletal town below forms a silhouette of a humanless space, unnervingly near and yet not life-size - A shell - reminding us of uncomfortable truths of news-flash realities of war-torn communities, fled and fired.
The window frames of adjacent buildings - black-mirroring the imagined town - throw the viewer into more confusion - what is real and what is illusion? Trompe-l'œil reality state - a de Chirico echo - A 'sham' construct - created to be viewed from afar - a stage set whose players may be unaware that 'all that glitters is not gold.
Julian Opie - Bastide. 2 2022. Auto paint on aluminium and steel.
The blocked doors and windows of the sculpture - symbolic touchstones permanently outlined - a cross - a flower - a bell - a faceless clock - forever out of time. Traced and repeated so many times that the details are gone, but the outlines remain. The walls are transparent to expose a no-mans-land - like a prison cell - or the charred remains of a burnt building.
Julian Opie - Bastide. 2 2022. Auto paint on aluminium and steel.
From inside, I imagined this playground with sharp edges - as being cast in bitter chocolate - brittle and easy to snap - temptingly meltable - into mirrored pools of gloss - but in fact, the work is created from cool aluminum and steel, coated in perfectly mechanised auto paint. - My mind flashes to Jackson Pollock and his use of alkyd enamel paints - chosen for their satisfyingly spash-able immediacy maybe - but Opie's paint choice is more distant, less human somehow, and altogether slower - which seems to contrast with the immediacy of his appeal conceptually.
Figure 4, position 8. 2022, Figure 3, position 2. 2022, Figure 2, position 4. 2022 - Polished stainless steel.
Flaty monotone graphics - like a series of logos - the buy now immediacy of the takeaway coffee cup - the fast food burger wrapper - but what is Julian Opie wrapping? - his contents is concept, food for thought - food without a face. A trio of faceless characters recline and stretch with no sense of time - the viewer joining the dots for themselves - like a Lichtenstein without the speech bubbles - his work today offers an instant fix for the 5G cravings of an excited youthful audience - but Opie’s offering arrived long before social media or the internet.
In 3D real - the sculptures seen at London’s Lisson gallery are seductive for their scale and satisfying translation to their 2D relatives.
Julian Opie - OP.VR@LISSON/London Lisson Gallery 27 Bell Street, London. Until 15 April 2023. Images by Arnan Wang