
Julie Oppermann
B1214, 2012

Oppermann's compositions are achieved through equal parts rule and spontaneity. Painting layers …

Julie Opperman creates patterns of contrasting colors and repetitive lines that challenge the viewer’s visual perception. The paintings reference optical flicker, shutter afterimages, glitches, visual noise, and vertiginous movement. “They are hard to look at,” she says. They “create sensations of movement, flashes and flickers of light, illusions of depth and space, uncomfortable tensions.” Meticulously worked in acrylics and spray paint, her compositions resemble patterns that appear on computer screens, such as pixilation or the visual effects of data loss and file corruption. But rather than being filtered through a screen, the distortion manifests in the viewer’s field of vision, disrupting their ability to perceive the painting as a unified whole.


Oppermann's compositions are achieved through equal parts rule and spontaneity. Painting layers upon layers of nearly identical lines and waves, Oppermann crafts hallucinatory abstractions that flicker, expand, contract, and undulate based on the unique vantage point of an individual viewer. Her attuned use of …

Julie Opperman creates patterns of contrasting colors and repetitive lines that challenge the viewer’s visual perception. The paintings reference optical flicker, shutter afterimages, glitches, visual noise, and vertiginous movement. “They are hard to look at,” she says. They “create sensations of movement, flashes and flickers of light, illusions of depth and space, uncomfortable tensions.” Meticulously worked in acrylics and spray paint, her compositions resemble patterns that appear on computer screens, such as pixilation or the visual effects of data loss and file corruption. But rather than being filtered through a screen, the distortion manifests in the viewer’s field of vision, disrupting their ability to perceive the painting as a unified whole.