Artist: Julian Opie

Cristea Roberts Gallery presents an exhibition of new works by Julian Opie.

New works Julian Opie (b. 1958) are exhibited alongside prints and editions made over the last five years spanning the full breadth of the artist's multifaceted practice.

Julian Opie opens with a large-scale installation of the series Everyone., begun in 2023 and continuing through to 2025, where friends, gallerists, colleagues, family members and visitors to the artist’s studio appear in almost 100 portraits. Opie approaches the vinyl portraits by reducing the sitter’s features to the bare minimum. Facial characteristics are defined by only a few bold black lines, but within this he retains the distinctions that make each person unique and recognisable.

As well as drawing inspiration from his personal collection of art and artefacts - which includes Ancient Greek and Roman statuary, Egyptian sarcophagi, Japanese woodblocks and Old Master paintings - Opie also finds his subjects in the vocabulary and architecture of everyday life; popular comics, road signs, postcards and clips on social media.

The fast-paced, looped dances he encountered on TikTok formed the basis for a large series of works from 2023-24 which appear as small-scale LED, acrylic lenticulars and screenprints rendered in vivid colours drawn from nylon skiwear.

An observer of rural and urban environments, as well as people, Opie presents landscapes and scenic panoramas, including Landscapes., 2023, captured whilst cycling through the French countryside. These large-scale prints, each measuring almost two metres in width, reduce the sky and fields to a kaleidoscope of solid colours. Alongside them, Portuguese Towers., 2025, depicts the baroque detail of bell towers photographed by the artist as he drove from town to town, in black, powder coated steel.

At the Angel., 2026, a series of five prints that incorporates photography by the artist for the first time. To create his editions of figures walking, running or dancing, Opie photographs or films his subjects in motion. Observing their movement and postures, he draws each figure, stripping away detail to retain simple lines and shapes. To make At the Angel., the artist returns to this first step of photography, making it his central subject. Opie photographed pedestrians from a traffic island in North London. Back in his studio he grouped the figures he captured, arranging them in opposing directions and carefully composing them to create maximum contrast.

Opie states: “Those I draw are looked at while they go about their business oblivious of being watched. They seem noble and even magnificent in their personal worlds striding past and disappearing forever. I felt though that something interesting was happening with these photos that were of real people but at the same time clearly of composed, unreal images. I hoped I had dragged one reality into another.”