British artist Julian Opie, master of visual shorthand, goes solo in Shanghai with some stripped down sheep
From human hieroglyphs to a Blur album cover kept at London’s National Gallery, Opie doesn’t like to be categorised, and has included a broad range of works in his first exhibition in China
Some artists like metaphors. Not Julian Opie. To him, a herd of sheep is a herd of sheep, and not a social commentary about being led by the nose.
“I like sheep because they are very good at extending their presence outward and transforming any environment into theirs,” he says, standing among identical sheep sculptures in his first solo exhibition in China.
Having more details in a picture doesn’t mean it’s more like reality
“Put them in the middle of the city with grass to graze on and they would look perfectly normal. They are soothing. And human beings may use them for their wool rather than their meat and so we don’t have to feel too guilty.”
This complete lack of menace, this “niceness”, is how Opie’s art always comes across, though it is by no means dull.
The British artist best known for his hieroglyphs of human figures on the move is fond of experimenting with materials, with ways of capturing faces, with technology and with Eastern and Western traditions. And his works are fun, like the Heatherwick Studio and Fosters + Partners-designed Fosun Foundation building in Shanghai where a selection of recent pieces are on show in an exhibition co-organised with London’s Lisson Gallery. It’s lined on the outside with rotating organ pipes and resembles a marvellous floating structure in a Hayao Miyazaki animation.