Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood are taking a mysterious new art show to Venice
Thom Yorke and long-term collaborator Stanley Donwood are set to unveil a new body of work in a small gallery in Venice, and it seems not even they are sure what the work will be about.
As per Artnet, the exhibition is titled No Go Elevator (Not Without No Keycard) and will be the duo’s first-ever exhibition outside of the UK.
“Everything is new and nothing is old,” Donwood has revealed on what will be on display, which will include drawings and a large painting.
When pressed for more information on the exhibition, Yorke shared cryptically, “Your guess is as good as ours.”
The Radiohead frontman added, “There is no unifying theme, no concept. What is left out is more important than what is included right now… what may appear simple has a whole forest of confusion behind it!”
The flyer announcing the exhibition contains a flurry of words and phrases: “joyless / pointless / senseless / worthless / loveless / what’s best? / darkness / blindness / sleepless / thoughtless / witless / your mess.”
Donwood went on to explain the seemingly random semantic field: “It is very important to look at the words, and if you do not then you will have missed half of the work. However, it is not important to understand the words, so do not worry about that.”
The pair debuted their collaborative art in 2023 at London’s Tin Man Art gallery. The exhibition, titled The Crow Flies Part One, took its name from a Ted Hughes poem and depicted paintings that they crafted together between 2021 and 2023.
They began collaborating back in the 1990s, most notably on the cover of Radiohead’s albums. Their work enjoyed a retrospective at the Ashmolean Museum last year, titled This Is What You Get.
With this in mind, Yorke has been spurred on to look forward in their creative partnership: “We have spent quite a lot of time and effort in recent years being dragged back and forward through past work and that you cannot walk for too long with your head looking backwards. At some point, you’ll fall down a hole or hit a lamppost.”
Therefore, the new works have been created with immediacy, spontaneity, and temporal awareness in mind.
As such, Yorke explained, “This is a choice to show new stuff with no context. As always, we are struggling to find a language. I guess we liked the idea of people quietly walking/wandering into the middle of what is currently occupying our waking hours and thoughts.”
The collection will be on view at Castello 2432, Fondamenta dei Penini in Venice, from May 7th to June 7th.
