Jonny Niesche »Aura Panels«

Aura Panels, 2018

Jonny Niesche’s Aura Panels are a study on the sensualities of Glam aesthetic and cosmetic counter culture. Edged by gold mirror, their sublime colour gradients are radiantly minimal, reminding vaguely of deep cool swimming pools or horizonless sunsets.

In the 1980s, as a young boy, Niesche would often accompany his mother as she was shopping through the makeup and cosmetics sections of department stores. Niesche's early fixation with pigment swatches, powder-coated layers, and glitter continues throughout his oeuvre today. In many of his recent works he pays sensual homage to idols of the Glam Rock era such as Debbie Harry from the band Blondie or David Bowie, by way of exploring visual details of their attire and make-up and turning them into signature colour palettes as a template for specific work-cycles.

In 2017, Niesche began collecting multiple versions of Bowie’s legendary album cover, Aladdin Sane, forming a divergent remix of the gradient points of the lightning-bolt makeup, struck across Bowie’s face. From there, he developed a fixed colour palette which served as the template for the works in his London show, Cracked Actor, the title of which he borrowed from a Bowie song. Aura Panels forms an offspring to these works and continues the sensual and charismatic analysis associated with this series.

Fundamental to Niesche’s practice is the “performative” contemplation of surface, colour, depth, and motion, as can be experienced also in this edition. The colour gradients of the Aura Panels are printed on voile, a translucent fabric that is stretched on mirror as a backdrop, evoking differing shades and saturations of colour, depending on the viewing angle. Viewed from the front, a viewer experiences a personal “performative moment” as she or he discovers a kind of holographic reflection of her- or himself.

Jonny Niesche

Jonny Niesche (born 1972) lives and works in Sydney. Steered by the visual metrics of the Glam Rock era and its cosmetic counter culture, he creates sublime paintings, sculptures, and installations that wrestle with the perceptions of colour, surface, and spatiality. By employing complex steel fabrications, mirrors, and digital painting processes on transparent fabric, he brings forth an experiential trigger that is part psychosexual, metaphysical, superficial, and rhapsodic, luring the viewer into a personal moment of “performative contemplation.”

Niesche holds a Master of Fine Arts at Sydney College of the Arts and studied under Heimo Zobernig at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 2015, he was awarded the Fauvette Loureiro Travelling Scholarship. He has staged numerous solo shows, notably at Peter von Kant in London, Zeller van Almsick in Vienna, New Jörg Kunstverein in Vienna, and Sarah Cottier Gallery in Sydney. Niesche has participated in group shows at Artspace in Sydney, the National Gaillery of Victoria in Melbourne, and Lundgren Gallery in Mallorca. His work is held in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and in private collections across USA, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Read our story with Jonny Niesche in his studio.

Photos: Jessica Maurer