I want to make things in new ways. I want to make things I like. I want to find out what I really like. At a time when there are thousands of voices - ads, columnists, corporations, influencers - telling me what I should like, I want to get in touch with what it is that I actually do like. I think that is the value of art: to remind us what really matters to us.

(Brian Eno, 2025)

Paul Stolper is pleased to announce Brian Eno's Blocks, a new series of paintings made in August 2025 during a two-day continuous performance in his London studio. Over four hundred primed birch ply panels, each measuring 18 x 13 x 2.5 cm, were laid out across a number of long tables.

Eno started by making large cut-out stencils which he set down across numerous panels and sprayed through, resulting in positive painted shapes. By spraying over found shapes and dried pasta, either deliberately placed, or randomly dropped, negative painted shapes appeared on the panels below. More congested areas would reveal much busier compositions, where others with few shapes and paint covering emerged more quiet and minimal. Throughout the process Eno was picking out pieces as they seemed finished, leaving gaps to be filled with other blocks. A block stayed in circulation until it 'got somewhere'.

Hugely enjoying the dramatic oppositions of composition and colour offered by the remaining panels, Eno adopted a very different curatorial approach to the project. From these he made a small series of works, each one made up of four panels, measuring 31 x 31 cm, whilst leaving a 5 x 5 cm square gap in the centre, again referencing the positive and negative shapes made in the painting process.