Julian Opie: Signs

Amy and I walked all over downtown Saturday afternoon, examining the various installations of the Julian Opie: Signs public art exhibit that opened this week. There are eleven pieces placed all around downtown, from White River State Park, through the heart of downtown (Maryland Street, Monument Circle, Washington & Meridian, Delaware & Market, Ohio Street at the Chase Tower), one near IMOCA at Vermont, Indiana, and Senate, and one at the corner of College and Massachusetts. There is also one up at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

I’m not even sure how you would go about describing these works, as they are not just one type of art, and they are not saying one particular thing or another; the pieces are of various mediums (some of them require electricity), feature both people and animals (one has both), and are both two- and three-dimensional. I don’t like to be told the central theme of a work (or works) of art, preferring instead to generate my own idea of a theme based on my emotional response to the piece or pieces in question; so I will not attempt here to corral these pieces into a neat little cage called “The Theme.”

On the other hand, one of the certain things about this exhibition is that you are going to love the time you spend walking around downtown and looking at each of these pieces of art. Amy and I saw only six of them on foot, and then another two as we drove along Maryland Street on the way home; I plan to get the four I did not see on foot downtown on my day off on Tuesday, and I suspect that we will catch the one at the Art Museum when we go up there to see the European artist exhibit, the dates of which I am not sure of and cannot at the moment locate on their website.

I don’t know if these works are quite as much fun as the Tom Otterness sculptures that were here a year or two ago, but the Opie works are certainly interesting to look at, and a handful of them might actually transport you, if you are prone to such a happening. The most transporting of the ones that Amy and I saw today on foot would have to be “Sheep Cow Deer Dog Chicken Cat Goat,” which is at the rise of the hill near the amphitheater in White River State Park. Looking at the map of the exhibit from last Sunday’s paper, I incorrectly eyeballed this one as being somewhere around the back edge of the zoo parking lot—and obviously did not read the blurb that clearly spelled out where it was, until after we had doubled back around the zoo parking lot and found nothing. We wound up approaching it by walking through the place where the band plays in the amphitheater and going up through the grass to find the exhibit at the top of the hill.

When you approach the pieces that way, you see the city skyline behind them, and the lush grass of The Lawn unfolding in front of and above you as you come nearer. It is remarkably peaceful, and a little bit sublime, to see those seven inanimate objects. Physically they are but wood, paint, and the application of a clever design. Seen from a distance, though, they...I don’t know, they just made me feel good.

If you live here in Indianapolis, or live close enough to visit, be sure to catch these works of art sometime over the next year; and if you live, work, or play downtown, be sure to catch them often. A year seems like a long time, but will go by quickly; and we will miss them when they are gone.