Jonny Niesche | Broadsheet
Photo: Courtesy of Gucci and Truls Blaasmo
by Gitika Garg
Sydney artist Jonny Niesche spent a decade in New York’s electronic music scene before returning to home and turning his attention to art – at the age of 30.
“I helped my parents renovate their house and sell it, and just out of the blue, I decided to do a painting on the For Sale sign,” Niesche says. “It looked like a big canvas, so I just attacked it – and loved it.”
Since then, Niesche’s hyper-colourful abstract paintings have been exhibited across the world, from Los Angeles and Vienna to London, and most recently, at the Munich Opera Festival.
A musical sensibility still runs through his work. When recording music, “you’re creating a sonic landscape,” Niesche says. “You can push sounds really far back, or to the right and the left. It’s like constructing an audible image. "I think of painting in a very similar way. Warmer colours come forward, colder colours go back. Sharp images come forward. Blurriness goes back.”