You Are Driving a Subaru

Julian Opie

23 December 1997

Car in lacquered wood 124 x 385 x 142 cm

The third piece, You Are Driving a Subaru, depicts a car at a virtually real scale. Opie expresses his concern for the dimensions and the material quality of the object in relation to the spectator’s physical space. A real presence potentially experienced as such, but at the same time generating a feeling of uncanniness, of distance, of artificiality. A reference to a hypertechnologised, hyperrealist nature.

If, as a whole, Opie’s works enable a distanced re-enactment of experiences resulting from our relationship with objects and situations in the context of contemporary society, in this specific exhibition context, they propose a reading pointing to the technologised, hyperrealist and codified nature of our daily life and of our material culture.

Courtesy: Fonds national d’art contemporain (Cnap), Ministère de la culture et de la communication, París, 01-032