Julian Opie: Collected Works at Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle

COMPARE and contrast. This is an exhibition in two halves. Portraits in vinyl and other modern materials by leading British artist Julian Opie occupy one side of the gallery opposite traditional paintings and sculptures from his own collection.

His portraits are inspired by graphics and digital technology. Those in oils by Dutch and English artists date from the 16th-17th centuries. A showcase divides cut-out figures in plastic and paper from Egyptian statuettes and Roman heads, some dating back several centuries BC.

The parallels place Opie within western art’s tradition of portraiture and part of the timeless impulse to capture human likeness in tangible form.

His figures, mostly standing while those opposite are seated, share a focus on clothes as signifiers of social position.

His pared-down style of block colour and economy of line has its painterly effects, notably in depicting eyes in pictures and on sculpted heads. There is the same seeking-out of character, whether blokes in jeans or fashionable women in cocktail dress, the same penetrating gaze connecting sitter and viewer as in portraits of nobles and ladies attired in satin and lace.

Two formidable heads in paste and resin correlate to busts depicting the fleshy features of the composer Gluck and the haunted expression of a mitred medieval bishop.

The novelty is digital technology. Some portraits actually move – eyes blink, earrings swing, his self-portrait in t-shirt heaves as if breathing. Elsewhere there is contemporary use of marbled mosaic and flashes of neon.

There is a salutary contrast between old and new in two studies of women placed side by side. A French noblewoman reclines in red velvet, flowers all about, comfortable and fecund, in possession of herself and the onlooker. Opie's counterpart is a beautiful woman of similar age, head swivelled uncomfortably backwards, hurt eyes glistening – a graphic juxtaposition inviting reflection.

The exhibition continues until February 22.