Julian Opie

It’s surprising that this show represents the first solo gallery outing in New York by British painter and sculptor Julian Opie—surprising because Opie is such a major player in London’s art scene. Emerging in early 1990s, Opie was associated with both the members of New British Sculpture movement and their less decorous contemporaries, the YBAs or Young British Artists. Opie quickly established himself with a snappy, Pop-inflected style that was an odd amalgam of Matisse cutout, stain-glass window and bathroom-door pictogram. His signature subject is the human form distilled into a combination of bold black outlines and flat areas of color that elide details like facial features—an analogy, according to the artist, to the leveling effects of globalism on culture and society. More of the same is presented here, with frieze-like paintings of rushing crowds that appear to be caught in a crosswalk, as well as a trio of freestanding silhouettes in black enameled steel that depict female pedestrians standing around as if they were impatiently waiting for the light to change.