Birmingham, UK - Ikon Gallery presents a major exhibition of the later colour woodblock prints of 19th century Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), curated by British artist Julian Opie, consisting mainly of landscapes on loan from The British Museum. On exhibition through 20 January, 2008.

The correspondence between Opie’s work and that of Hiroshige is intriguing. Both artists focus on landscape and figures, refining received visual information to arrive at stylised conclusions, flattened compositions that are abstractions of everyday life. On the other hand, the slightest inflections in their lines, the subtlest shifts in their shapes, can be extraordinarily eloquent, capturing with aesthetic economy the most poignant idiosyncrasies to convey a wealth of meaning.

The Moon Reflected is the result of Opie’s longstanding interest in Hiroshige. His preference for Hiroshige’s later work is significant; it tends to be broader in style and less narrative and thus accentuating more aesthetic concerns. Likewise, Opie is keen to convey the formal quality of his own work as much as transporting us through beguiling evocation, effecting a tension between subject matter and an apprehension simply of the way something looks.

The series featured in this exhibition are Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces (1856), One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856-58) and Thirty-six Views of Fuji (1858). Their formal quality tends to be accentuated by the artist’s choice of a vertical format, never before used to such an extent in Japanese landscape prints. Another notable feature of these works is the frequent occurrence of bokashi, a technique whereby ink is partially or one-sidedly wiped off the block before printing to create extraordinary cross-fading effects in colour, especially in large expanses of sea and sky.

Also included in The Moon Reflected is a number of earlier sketchbooks. Three triptychs of vertical prints, resulting in three horizontal compositions constitute a kind of finale in this exhibition. These works, made in 1857, are extraordinary for their ambition and the breadth characteristic of the artist’s later work. There is no series title, but respectively they are known as the Snow, Moon and Flowers triptychs. Beautiful and unpretentious, they epitomise not only Hiroshige’s vision at the height of his powers, but also what it is about this Japanese artist that appeals particularly to Julian Opie.

A catalogue will accompany the exhibition with texts by Henry Smith of Columbia University and Tim Clark from The British Museum. Exhibition supported by The Japan Foundation. Visit Ikon Gallery at : www.ikon-gallery.co.uk