While superficially streamlined and simple, each of Julian Opie's animated sculptures in Dublin's O'Connell Street is surprisingly individual, writes Aidan Dunne

Barry Flanagan's sculptural hares were such a success with the public when they adorned O'Connell Street in 2006 that Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, has decided to kick off its centenary celebrations with an outdoor show of animated sculptures by the enormously popular English artist, Julian Opie. Walking Down O'Connell Street features a number of Opie's trademark graphic figures distributed along the street. Each is based on a particular person and, as is typical of the artist's work, each is also an "everyperson", just like the city-dwellers who throng the surrounding area every day.

Although Opie's works take many forms, ranging from paintings to animated films and three-dimensional sculptures, the idea of a simple graphic image is at the heart of everything he does. This ideal, of conveying things in terms of their simplest possible visual expression, does not imply a lack of effort on his part. Rather, the outline figures or spare, stylised landscapes that we eventually see are edited down from vast amounts of data.

Opie makes stylised representations of generic subjects, including portraits, male and female nudes, animals, cars, buildings, a car-racing circuit and landscapes. Each is reduced to a seemingly bland, streamlined symbol of itself. Yet the portraits, for example, while composed of just a few sinuous black lines, with dots for eyes, are, surprisingly enough, strongly characterised. It is as if Opie wants to see just how far he can minimise the amount of information in an image while still making it recognisable and distinctive. And it seems that he can push it very far indeed.

His images work because while they are extremely simple, their simplicity derives from the distillation of underlying complexity. This is achieved with the help of computer programmes, but it should be pointed out that the computer doesn't make the work. The imagery is largely generated by means of digital technology, and is informed by our technological environment, but it is really a reflection of Opie's sensibility and his talents.

Born in London in 1958, he grew up in Oxford and went on to study art at Goldsmiths College, where Michael Craig-Martin famously influenced many of the students who became the Young British Artists. That influence extended mostly to imparting a cool, conceptual attitude to art-making, but in the case of Opie it's tempting to discern the impact of Craig-Martin's own work (he was employed as Craig-Martin's assistant for a time).

Using black adhesive tape, Craig- Martin makes flat outline wall drawings of everyday objects, or renders them in flat colour on canvas. The other artist who may have been important for Opie is the late Patrick Caulfield, who also used bold black outline and flat colour in his elegant evocations of contemporary interiors.

We could also look to Japanese woodblock prints, to comic-book illustration, and particularly to the brilliantly economic graphic style of Belgian artist Hergé's Tintin books, as significant influences. In fact, Opie is an acknowledged fan of Hergé, and many details of his reductionist visual language specifically recall the Belgian's work.

As with comic books, there is something playful and toy-like about Opie's work that contributes greatly to its attractiveness. His achievement is to have formulated a visual language of simple signs that seems well-suited to convey aspects of contemporary experience. A possible failing is that the areas of experience he deals with can come across as being generally superficial.

HIS WORK LOOKS entirely at home in a slick urban world, an affluent consumer culture in which technology is omnipresent. That is, of course, the world Opie inhabits (you can even download Opie screensavers), and why shouldn't he set out to describe a reality he knows? Particularly as a large part of his concern seems to be the way we live within a simulation of reality anyway, substantially cushioned from the real by layers of technology and more practical luxuries. He has depicted mundane, everyday experiences - walking, driving a car - in a mode of virtual reality that is hardly profound but is nonetheless visually compelling and true to aspects of contemporary life. Similarly, his portraits are of individuals who live within a stylish, comfortable milieu. Why should we be interested in them at all, one might ask, particularly as Opie is at pains not to probe beneath the surface.

He is interested in them to the extent that they are indicative of their social and cultural status and context (often including their occupations, for example).

The same could be said of Patrick Caulfield's evocation of a specific aspect of his world, yet his work has lasted surprisingly well and looks increasingly strong despite its ephemeral subject matter.

Opie's portraits too, for all their graphic economy, are strangely fascinating, not least because of the tension he generates between the living subject and the almost abstract sign.

Opie put it brilliantly himself when he said: "I want it to be as if each person I draw were a multinational company with a logo" (the logo being their own image). It is appropriate in this context that his subjects include Kate Moss and Bryan Adams, not to mention the members of Blur, depicted on the sleeve of their greatest hits CD. In relation to the portraits, his use of animation adds another layer of tension - when we see a virtual logo suddenly blink or change its expression, it springs disconcertingly to life. His walking figures are, strangely enough, beautiful in the way they encapsulate the elegance of simple movements. They are also both specific individuals and everybodies.

Publicly sited, they suggest the status of the urban-dweller as part of the crowd, a type, and also a distinctive individual.

Often, Opie's subjects could be taken as being alienated, soulless consumers in their depicted relationships to the world, and to a certain extent that is certainly an accurate reflection of the way things are. More recently, he took this idea a stage further when he made a series of pieces based on a pole dancer, Shahnoza. Some observers were slightly disturbed at the layers of objectification involved. Opie's written account of his efforts to recruit Shahnoza, hinging on his attendance at lap-dancing clubs for purposes of "research", is quite funny. But it is reasonable that the commodification of the body and sexuality are legitimate subjects for an artist who has consistently explored the way we experience the contemporary. Meanwhile, you can make up your own mind about his O'Connell Street strollers.