Julian Opie discusses his works in his solo exhibition at Kristianstads Konsthall, Sweden.

Do you actually cut out the figures and weld it on yourself? What happens when you’re making these pieces?

I use a lot of different factories and I’ve ended up with about five relationships. I’ve got a relationship with an LCD guy, who makes computers and buys LCDs and puts it all together and makes the frames. I’ve got a relationship with a company that makes advertising billboards. That’s what these people do. This is computer cut vinyl so 3M makes this poured plastic; it’s a bit like paint. They pour it and it dries in thin sheets and then the computer-guided knife following my emailed drawing cuts the areas of coloured plastic, and then they’re floated with water onto this plasticized canvas. Mostly that system was used for backlighting. I came across it in the eighties in America, and it struck me as having this incredible, rather seductive glow; like a light in a forest at night. It makes you want to go towards it like a moth. It’s very flat, very dead in a way, but very seductive too. I thought that I wanted to try and find out about it, so I did and I ended up using it quite a lot.

I also use a factory, a couple of them, for LEDs. It sometimes strikes me as odd – when I was in Korea recently doing a show, some of the people seemed quite surprised to see some of these techniques. Yet you open the door and go out onto the street and it’s everywhere. Everything is done on either computer-cut vinyl or LEDs or LCDs. Our world is rapidly being surfaced by this stuff. And yet, you bring it into an art gallery and there’s an element of surprise at seeing it. Obviously it’s not entirely a great thing that the entire world is being splattered with these things, but I think it’s ok to go out there and see what you can do with it. And I also like Egyptian stone carving that is out there too. I like this idea that you can slide around and not have to be 1960’s influenced or feel that you become associated with a particular technique, but rather that all of these things are available and of equal value. Obviously if a martian came down they’re not going to be making much differentiation between granite and vinyl, what would they care? It’s just what it does.

I did a long project of landscapes in Sweden and Norway, which I showed in Norway, to very little reaction. I don’t know what that meant. I did a huge project on Japanese landscapes which I showed in Japan, and they’ve been more successful in Japan perhaps than anywhere else. It’s hard to know whether you should take work to places where it would surprise people and show them that which they’re not familiar with or whether you should reflect on familiarity. My sense is that people prefer to reflect on their reality and on their situation, than learn or be confronted with newer things. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense, it’s just the way we are – in the sense that, mostly, what we’re interested in is people in the end. Even if we’re interested in other stuff, it’s in relation to ourselves and perhaps that’s why I focus so much on the human body. When you come down to it, that’s sort of what one’s talking about a lot of the time.

But your success with the landscapes in Japan, do you think it could be to do with the language and the tradition and the animation?

I think there is a tradition there that I react to, as do a lot of artists. Van Gogh was buying prints like mad whenever he could and Frank Lloyd-Wright had a huge collection of them. There’s always been this fascination, just for its own sake, but also for its rather different approach to imagery. Different to the one that we’ve been brought up with since the Renaissance, which is quite a fixed view. Their view seems so alive and yet so different. But I think, conversely, they have a very visual, a very graphic knowledge and language. The colours, the way they write is very graphic, very drawn, so it seems quite natural. I did hear that Carl Andre never had much success in Japan. You’d think that would be the perfect place to show his raked gardens and everything, they should understand it entirely. It’s a confusing world out there.

I am going to get a new phone background, I don’t know what to have. What is yours?

This one has… a granite sculpture. Which is slightly random because I just got this phone and it was a book I was reading. It should have my daughter really, or my son.