Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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Artnet NOVEMBER 4, 2025 - by Min Chen

BRIAN ENO'S NEW PAINTINGS ARE A RIOT OF COLOR AND PLAY - AND THEY'RE UP FOR GRABS

The artist has created more than four hundred wood blocks carrying spontaneous, one-of-a-kind designs.

In August, Brian Eno set out hundreds of small wood panels across a series of worktables in his London studio. Over two days, he laid cut-out stencils atop the array, before spray-painting the blocks in blues, pinks, greens, and metallic shades. Pieces were removed when the artist thought them finished; others stayed until he felt they "got somewhere."

The upshot of Eno's project, simply titled Blocks, is more than four hundred birch plywood slabs carrying surprising, one-of-a-kind designs. From November 12, you will be able to snap them up through London's Paul Stolper Gallery for £500 ($656) each.

And you'll be spoiled for choice. Measuring about seven-by-five inches, the compositions on offer range from the minimal to the complex, vivid to muted. Block 223, for instance, features various color fields quietly merging into one another, while Block 55 dances with licks of sunset tones. Some pieces, such as Block 1 and Block 288, boast eye-catching interplays between positive and negative spaces - the result of Eno spraying over objects from cut-out shapes to dried pasta.

The improvisational nature of the series is in line with Eno's generative ethos, which hinges on randomness and unpredictability. He believes there's meaning in the method (see: his 1975 Oblique Strategies card deck, created with Peter Schmidt, that encourages creatives to view their process from fresh angles).

"Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen," he once wrote. "The value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art."

In Blocks, chance and randomness also turn up in Eno's grouped panels. These works are composed of four painted panels, fused together such that a square gap remains at the center. The panels were picked by the artist to showcase unexpected juxtapositions of color and compositions. While Block 367 offers a contrast of spray-painted forms, say, Block 378 brings together panels of a similarly shaped and toned motif.

This latest artistic series follows Eno's drop of a custom turntable in 2024, also through Paul Stolper. The $25,000 gadget doesn't just play records, but lights up with what the artist termed "seductive" color transitions. "When it doesn't have to do anything in particular, like play a record," he explained, "it's a sculpture."

Earlier this year, Eno and Beatie Wolfe released their twin collaborative albums, Lateral and Luminal, in which the Roxy Music founding member and multidisciplinary artist endeavored to put music to feelings. In yet another collaboration, Eno paired up with Dutch artist Bette Adriaanse for the 2024 book What Art Does, which posits a new theory about, well, what art does.

Blocks is available for sale from November 12 at 4.00 p.m. GMT / 11 a.m. ET online, in person, or over the phone through Paul Stolper Gallery. The works will be on view at the gallery, November 14, 2025 - January 17, 2026.