Become a My Ocula member for exclusive access to contemporary art and personalised artist recommendations.
Join Us Sign In
The Art World in Focus
Clear
Jonny Niesche

JONNY NIESCHE

Fat Lava Starkwhite 5 March–14 June 2025 Auckland
Overview Artworks Location
Request Prices & Availability
Press Release

From 1950 to 1970, in the craters left behind by Total War, a style of pottery emerged in West Germany. It drew on the Bauhaus ideal of providing affordable well-designed objects to the masses, and it produced hundreds of vivid, volcanic pots, in brown, red, orange and cobalt.

It boomed. And it ended.

People put their pots in storage or gave them away to second-hand stores. In the suburbs of 1980s Sydney, a young Jonny Niesche encountered these pots, and he hated them. He found them repulsive: chunky, ugly, garish and old.

For Fat Lava, Niesche has revisited this formative moment of his adolescence, immersing himself in the colour palette and its attendant sense of disgust to explore ideas of saturation, value, obsolescence, and desire.

Named for a subset of glazes used in West German pottery, and an exhibition which resurrected the worldwide interest in the style, Fat Lava demonstrates Niesche’s ability to encounter again what disgusted him, and—with us as his accomplices—to grapple with the edges of taste.

Read More

Installation Views

About the Artist

Working across an expanded field of painting, sculpture and abstraction, Jonny Niesche’s vividly coloured work wraps the viewer in total sensory stimulation. The seductive, iridescent surfaces of his paintings hum and shimmer with pigment, colour that seems to float slightly above the voile surface. The effect is intensified by the indistinct edges between bands of colour that surround the dark middle ground. As one tone blurs and dissolves into the next, a silky insubstantiality of pure colour and sensation emerges. Niesche has long worked with the intrinsic relationship between colour, form and light to produce formal and optically charged works that challenge our perception of space. His painting offers a transformative formal beauty that is beguiling. The glowing neon tones and soft pastels that flow from a mysterious dark centre are finished with reflective gold rims, mirroring the viewer back to his or her self in a surprising encounter with the art work.

View Artist Profile

Also Exhibiting at Starkwhite

All Exhibitions
Fiona Pardington
FIONA PARDINGTON Greatest Misses Starkwhite 3 May–6 June 2026 Auckland
About the Gallery

Starkwhite is a contemporary art gallery in Auckland, New Zealand, specialising in the presentation of interdisciplinary visual art exhibitions with an international focus. Starkwhite is committed to a strong art fair programme engaging with the best of contemporary art practice.

In 2022 Starkwhite partnered with 1301PE (Los Angeles) to open 1301SW in Melbourne, Australia. 1301SW opened its second space in Sydney in October 2024. www.1301SW.com.

View Gallery Profile
Address
94 Newton Road
Newton
Auckland
New Zealand
Opening Hours
Tue - Fri, 10pm - 5pm
Sat, 11am - 3pm
(1)
Auckland 94 Newton Road, Newton
Starkwhite contemporary art gallery in Auckland New Zealand
Starkwhite
94 Newton Road, Newton, Auckland, New Zealand
+64 9 307 0703
http://www.starkwhite.co.nz

Opening hours
Tue - Fri, 10pm - 5pm
Sat, 11am - 3pm
Magazine Gallery Platform Advisory
Ocula Magazine

A respected voice in contemporary art discourse.

Focusing on ambitious storytelling and insightful art-world commentary. Ocula Magazine publishes in-depth interviews, critical essays and timely analysis on the artists, exhibitions and ideas driving the global art world.

 Learn more about Ocula Magazine Learn more about Ocula Magazine Ocula Gallery Platform

Showcasing the best of the art world.

Ocula partners with galleries from around the world to highlight their artists, artworks and exhibitions. Gallery membership is by application and invitation, with each member vetted by an independent panel.

 Learn more about Ocula Membership Learn more about Ocula Membership Ocula Advisory

Specialises in the sale of major artworks.

Led by a team with deep ties to the world’s leading auction houses, galleries and collectors. Ocula’s advisory team offers bespoke services to high-net-worth clients from around the world who are looking to acquire the best of contemporary and modern art.

 Learn more about our team and services Learn more about Ocula Advisory
The art world in focus