Julian Opie’s animations or architecture sculptures created out of the aesthetic construction kit of computer games, miniature models, comics and graphic design always look as if an intelligent computer had developed them as illustrations for a leaflet advertising a ›brave new world‹. Opie’s works are also depicted in the cold light of the draft of an ideal world which functions smoothly at last since it does without human beings. In 1987, Opie worked on the first photographic collages of flying architectural structures, while at the same time creating wall and floor sculptures which experiment with a legibility that ranges between functional architectural details and the minimalist pictorial wording. An important focus in the transition to the 1990s is placed by the blocks of inaccessible ›houses‹, ›constructions‹ and ›labyrinths‹ arranged in space. At the same time, the work with the somehow cryptic title On average present day humans are one inch shorter than they were 8000 years B.C. refers to De Stijl elements and to the cubes of a Robert Morris but charges these with an anthropological perspective.
Julian Opie
On average present day humans are one inch shorter than they were 8000 years B.C., 1991
