A French winter comes to India (With Pix)

Contemporary UK-based visual artist Julian Opie has captured the essence of winter in France through a series of digitally manipulated landscapes that are being showcased here.
Titled "Winter" the collection being exhibited at the new art gallery of the British Council here centres around a sequence of 75 prints that represents a circular walk taken by the artist through the French countryside on a beautiful day.
The prints have influences from 17th century Dutch landscape to street view on Google Maps.
Opie, considered one of the pioneers of the New British Sculpture movement says he has chosen a particular way of describing the world and movement though his series 'Winter'

"It is said that we do not perceive movement, we see a series of still changing images and our brain intuits movement. Certainly as I walk through space I register the changing surroundings in stages, a building is closer, a dog further away and in this way I navigate and place myself within the space," says Opie.
The 57-year old artist depicts the landscape in a fascinating manner. In the ongoing exhibition, Opie took a photograph every twenty paces on a circular walk as the light was fading on a misty winter's day.

The intention, he says, was to show images sequentially on a gallery wall, or on an LCD screen, through which the visitor's mind can surge from one empty image to the next, recreating the walk in his mind.

"I use photography as a notebook and a mirror to bring the images and the information into my studio and onto my computer screen. My screen then becomes a window, a mirror, a telescope and a video recorder," he says.
Works from the series is set to be for public viewing here till July 27. It is scheduled to travel to Mumbai, Kolkata and Goa.