You see an office building 3 1996

Julian Opie’s ‘You see an office building 3’ presents us with a simplified, graphic rendering of urban architecture, made in an unknown year using an unknown material. The high-contrast palette of black and white flattens depth, turning the structure into a pattern. Look at how each window is a solid, dark square, resisting any sense of interior space, of life within. The surface is smooth and clean, erasing any hint of the artist's hand. This reminds me of the work of Bridget Riley, in its systematic arrangement of forms and colours, but here there is a suggestion of the familiar world. Consider those ground-level windows that form the entrance: their vertical emphasis disrupts the grid, gesturing towards a human scale. Opie invites us to contemplate how we perceive and inhabit our built environment. Ultimately, Opie encourages us to reflect on the relationship between abstraction and representation.