At Paul Stolper Gallery, Brian Eno Transcends the Boundaries of Light and Sound

Brian Eno is best known as a musician and composer, but his innovations in the field have always been accompanied by a parallel pursuit in the visual—namely, in light and video. The legendary Englishman, who’s often credited with coining the term “ambient music,” has said he’s interested in transforming light into a visceral sensation. For “Light Work” at Paul Stolper Gallery in London, he uses light installations in collaboration with ambient sound to create slow-moving systems that distort the viewer’s sense of time.

Eno, who lives and works in London, has been experimenting with light since he was 17, and the melding of mediums has always been essential to his work. “When I look back on what I’ve made over the intervening years,” he has said, “it seems to me I’ve been trying to slow music down so it became more like painting, and to animate paintings so that they became more like music.” His hope, he says, is that the two “meet and fuse in the middle.”

That synthesis is on display in Eno’s latest exhibition, which showcases six new artworks intertwining light and sound. In each light box, LEDs slowly transform in endless combinations of colorscapes. The infinite loops seamlessly evolve without a clear beginning or end—a process accompanied by ambient sounds, including a new piece Eno wrote for the show.