KÖNIG Galerie (Berlin) has unveiled Julian Opie’s first exhibition in the former St. Agnes Church — a monumental installation that transforms the church’s vaulted interior into a dynamic urban landscape populated by soaring towers, animated LED panels, and striking portraits.

Julian Opie (b. 1958, London) is a firmly established figure in the international art world. His practice spans painting, sculpture, animation, and digital media. The themes he returns to time and again are identity, movement, and the abstraction of the human form. Yet I chose to approach this exhibition “blind” — without reading his biography or critical texts — to allow myself an unmediated encounter with the works, free from the filter of accolades and authority.

The first impression is that the space operates like a unified stage set, where familiar elements of the cityscape acquire museum-level gravitas. In the main hall, metallic towers rise alongside figures of strolling children and a makeshift London pavement dotted with anonymous passersby.

The towers are compressed architecture, often existing only for themselves. Like the human body, vertical, they allow you to build an urban environment in miniature — as though you had wandered into a city’s blueprint.

– Opie says.

One wonders if he is also suggesting that people, like towers, exist only for themselves.

Then come the portraits. Stone — austere, almost unsettling. Wood — warm, almost domestic. Plastic — bold, with a Pop Art echo. The material dictates the emotional tone, yet the faces remain expressionless. This forces the viewer to confront the cultural clichés and labels we instinctively project onto images.

On the lawn outside the gallery are figures of people at rest, inspired by the pandemic experience — scenes that remind us of the value of simple human presence: picnics, fresh air, the act of being together. Even at the gallery’s entrance, this “game of dissolution” continues: we walk among the sculptures, becoming part of the installation ourselves.

It’s hard not to think about the sheer labor and scale of the project. Eight-meter-high metal towers verge on industrial production. Who decides which artist is worthy of such resources? This is not only a question for gallerists and curators, but for the mechanisms of the art world itself: by what criteria is it decided who gets to “speak at full volume”?

I’m reminded of an exhibition at the Berlin National Gallery on the everyday lives of artists: many works part-time jobs to pay for materials and studio space. This raises the dilemma — is it possible to grow as an artist while keeping such a fractured rhythm? Or does the system itself erect barriers?

Some believe that talent conquers all obstacles. But what about an artist’s self-identification, their belief in their own significance?
Does this matter? Why am I doing this? Imagine a creator returning home after a long day, exhausted yet brimming with the urge to make — only to be met by the inner questions.

Each artist’s path is different. But in the art world, as in any other sphere, either you are born with “wings,” or you must earn them. The ones who prevail are those who move faster and with greater resolve. In that sense, Julian Opie has unquestionably succeeded. I left the exhibition thinking not only about his works, but about larger questions — freedom, resources, and the role of the artist. And that, to me, is the truest goal of art: to trigger an inner dialogue that keeps unfolding long after you’ve left the room.