White Stripes Frontman Jack White Is Showing Art at Damien Hirst’s Gallery

Jack White, who growled and grinded as the singer/guitarist of the White Stripes and has since positioned himself as a primal rock god on his own, is showing a new side as a sculptor with a show opening in a London gallery run by none other than Damien Hirst.

As chronicled in the Financial Times, he two artists first met in 2021, when White was readying a new outpost of his Nashville-based Third Man Records store in Soho, across the street from Hirst’s studio. White played a show from Hirst’s balcony for the opening and caused a scene: “The guerrilla concert brought the neighbourhood to a standstill; a crowd of thousands sang along to The White Stripes’ driving anthem, ‘Seven Nation Army.”

When White showed Hirst pictures of artworks he’d made as a sort of secretive side-project, Hirst said they should mount a show—and five years later the result is “Jack White: THESE THOUGHTS MAY DISAPPEAR,” opening at Newport Street Gallery on May 29 and running through September 13.

White has long shown an inclination for art. The White Stripes’ second album was titled De Stijl, after the storied Dutch art-and-design movement. And the band’s iconic red-and-white all-over aesthetic was striking to anyone with a discerning eye.

But he never came out as a visual artist, per se. “I’m trying to put music a little bit on the back burner in this scenario,” he told the FT in advance of his exhibition. “I don’t want it to look like, ‘Oh, Frank Sinatra also does paintings, how cute.’ That’s probably why I never did a show; I wanted it to be taken as its own thing.” 

White’s artwork shows a devotion to found objects that he transforms, as well as furniture-inclined ojects that draw on his distant past as an upholsterer. His exhibition will include sculptures, furniture designs, notebooks, and photography.

“Anything done well I believe can be art, and that’s why Jack’s work struck me as so great,” Hirst told the FT. “He covers so much ground in everything he does, and he has an enormous sensibility. He’s not just painting, he’s making surreal objects that can push you away yet pull you in and appeal to you against your will. He pushes the boundaries constantly, which is right up my street.”