Julian Opie at Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition, The Helis Foundation, New Orleans, USA

The Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition (PCSE) presented by The Helis Foundation features works by Julian Opie. It is the South’s leading rotating public sculpture exhibition located in the heart of downtown New Orleans, spanning Poydras Street between Convention Center Boulevard and North Galvez Street.

With 13 installations currently on view, Julian Opie presents Yellow phone. (2023) and Turquoise hair. (2023) both deriving from Opie’s Busan Walkers series of 2023. Rendered in high-gloss auto paint on aluminum, each depicts a figure in motion – a passerby originally photographed on the Busan seafront and subsequently translated into a drawing, which in turn served as templates for a series of twenty statues. A simplified profile view of a body has been enlarged – given volumetric depth – and yet the image remains studiedly two-dimensional. At once inhabiting the physical world and the virtual space, the figure in Yellow phone. (2023) expresses a quality – pervasive in Opie’s art – of demonstrative gesture and self-containment as he walks while looking at his phone. The young woman of Turquoise hair. (2023) adopts a more extravagant posture, flinging out one arm behind her to merge with her hair.