Bijou Gets Undressed
6 works
Julian Opie Running People: Elvis For Sale
Julian Opie
Running People: Elvis, 2020
Anodised aluminium figure mounted on Corian bases
23 1/5 × 3 1/2 × 5 1/2 in | 58.9 × 8.9 × 14 cm
About this work
Julian Opie has established himself as one of the most recognizable figures in contemporary British art, known for his reductive visual language that distills the human form into bold, graphic essentials. His work occupies a distinctive position at the intersection of fine art, public sculpture, and digital culture, with pieces held in major institutional collections including the Tate, MoMA, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Opie's market presence remains robust, supported by consistent institutional exhibitions and strong collector demand across both primary and secondary channels. Running People: Elvis belongs to Opie's ongoing exploration of figures in motion, a thematic concern that has occupied the artist for over two decades. This series examines the universal act of running, rendered through Opie's characteristic style of simplified contours and flat planes of color. The work transforms an anonymous human gesture into something simultaneously personal and archetypal—the title "Elvis" lending individual identity to what might otherwise be a generic silhouette. Executed in anodised aluminium and mounted on a Corian base, this sculpture demonstrates Opie's facility with industrial materials, which he employs to achieve the clean precision central to his aesthetic. The modest scale of the work—just under two feet in height—allows for intimate engagement while retaining the monumental quality inherent in his larger public commissions. As an edition of twenty, the work offers collectors access to Opie's sculptural practice within a controlled production that maintains long-term value. Guy Hepner welcomes inquiries regarding the acquisition of this work.
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Edition & Provenance
- Year
- 2020
- Medium
- Anodised aluminium figure mounted on Corian bases
- Edition
- Edition of 20
About Julian Opie
Julian Opie (b. 1958, London) is one of the most recognisable and widely exhibited British artists of his generation, a painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose stripped-back figurative language has achieved both the commercial viability of design and the conceptual seriousness of fine art — a combination that few artists of any era have managed with equal confidence. Opie studied at Goldsmiths College under Michael Craig-Martin, graduating in 1982, and was representing by a major London gallery almost immediately. He has been a significant presence in the international art world for over four decades.
Opie's visual language is built from a small number of radical formal decisions: bold black outlines, flat unmodulated colour fields, the elimination of shadow, texture, and incidental detail, and a scale and graphic authority that draws openly on Egyptian hieroglyphics, Japanese woodblock printing, public signage, and the simplified conventions of digital interfaces. The result is a style of immediate recognisability — when you encounter a Julian Opie figure, you know it instantly — that nonetheless contains real formal thought about how images communicate, how representation functions, and what remains when almost everything is removed. His Walking Figures series, in which anonymous pedestrians in continuous motion are rendered in his signature distilled vocabulary and presented as both print editions and LED wall sculptures, has become one of the most compelling ongoing investigations in contemporary art into the relationship between the ancient idea of the frieze, the vernacular language of the public sign, and the aesthetic possibilities of the LED screen.
In 2000, Opie created the cover artwork for Blur's Best Of compilation — four simplified band portraits in his trademark style — bringing his visual language to an audience of millions and cementing his profile as an artist operating meaningfully across the boundary between fine art and popular culture. His portrait series, his landscape works, and his permanent public installations — including major commissions at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London — extend the reach of his practice into civic and architectural contexts. At the major auction houses, significant Opie works have traded in the £200,000–£500,000 range at Christie's and Sotheby's, while his print editions range from thousands to tens of thousands of pounds, providing entry points across a wide spectrum of collector budgets. His work is held in the Tate Collection, among other public institutions.
His media range is notably broad: silkscreen prints, vinyl paintings, LED panels, lenticular works, and public sculptures are all produced with equal technical rigour and formal clarity.
Guy Hepner maintains strong inventory and expertise in Julian Opie's print editions and LED works. Our gallery at 177 Tenth Avenue, New York offers collectors expert guidance on acquisition and valuation. We provide free, confidential valuations for those looking to sell Opie works and active connections to buyers engaged with this market.