LONDON
2015
Music has always been central to Thierry Noir’s work. Before becoming known around the world as the first artist to paint the Berlin Wall, Noir moved to West Berlin in the early 1980s in search of the city’s extraordinary underground music scene. At the time, Berlin was a place where punk, new wave, experimental music, hip hop and jazz collided, creating an atmosphere of constant creative experimentation. The same spontaneity, freedom and energy that defined the city’s musicians also became the foundation of Noir’s distinctive visual language. As Thierry has often said, “If I had not been an artist, I would have been a musician.”
Presented at the Howard Griffin Gallery in Shoreditch, Jazz was conceived as far more than a conventional exhibition of paintings. Instead, Thierry Noir transformed the entire gallery into a total installation, immersing visitors inside his colourful universe. Rather than simply hanging artworks on white walls, he painted directly across the architecture of the space itself, covering walls, columns and architectural details with his unmistakable bold lines and vivid colours. The gallery became an artwork in its own right, dissolving the boundary between exhibition design and painting and allowing visitors to step inside one of Noir’s paintings rather than simply view it.
This immersive approach reflected the way Noir has always understood painting—not as a static object but as an experience. His earliest works on the Berlin Wall existed within the urban environment rather than inside museums, surrounding people as they moved through the city. Jazz brought that same philosophy indoors, creating an environment where every surface contributed to the visual rhythm of the exhibition.
At the heart of the exhibition was Noir’s exploration of the relationship between music and painting. Jazz became both the subject and the method. Like an improvised musical performance, his paintings rely on instinct, speed and confidence rather than meticulous planning. Bold colour combinations function like unexpected musical harmonies, while his continuous black lines flow across the canvas with the freedom of improvised melodies. The resulting works possess a sense of movement and rhythm that reflects the energy of live performance.
The exhibition also marked an important expansion of Noir’s practice into three-dimensional space. Working alongside sculptor Chris Tsonias, Noir developed a series of large-scale sculptures and fully playable musical instruments inspired by his iconic characters. Guitars, violins, pianos and other instruments became sculptural extensions of his painted figures, transforming familiar motifs into physical objects that occupied the gallery alongside the paintings. These collaborative works blurred the distinction between sculpture, design, music and fine art, reinforcing the exhibition’s central idea that artistic disciplines can merge into a single creative language.
The installation extended beyond the walls of the gallery itself. During the exhibition, Thierry Noir painted a series of new murals throughout Shoreditch, creating a dialogue between the exhibition and the surrounding neighbourhood. Visitors encountered his work both inside the gallery and across East London, allowing the ideas explored within Jazz to spill naturally into the streets. This relationship between public art and gallery practice has always been fundamental to Noir’s career. His paintings have never belonged exclusively in one setting; they move freely between city walls, museums and exhibition spaces while maintaining the same immediacy, optimism and accessibility.
More than three decades after transforming the Berlin Wall into one of the world’s most recognisable open-air galleries, Jazz demonstrated how Thierry Noir’s practice continues to evolve while remaining rooted in the same principles of freedom, spontaneity and creative expression. Whether painting on the Berlin Wall, creating monumental public murals or transforming an entire gallery into an immersive installation, Noir’s unmistakable visual language continues to celebrate colour, rhythm and the universal power of art.
