Articles - 26 April 2005

Frank Bauer

Art Gallery of South Australia recent acquisition

The article has been reproduced on the Craft Australia website with the kind permission from the Art Gallery of South Australia and was first published in the Art Gallery of South Australia magazine April/May 2005 issue.

Lichtbild #016 or 'light-picture' is a recent example of the innovative work of South Australian, Frank Bauer, whose exploration into lighting had its genesis in the early 1990s. His light-pictures are a three dimensional expression that confers light through a cubic grid of rods hung with perforated anodized aluminum panels. In Lichtbild #016 the cube runs two deep, allowing small diffused lamps to be placed at regular intervals one or two deep inside the structure. Delicate and highly sculptural, Bauer's patented FB grid lighting system combines seamlessly with the coloured mesh panels. When illuminated, a theatrical shadow play dances through the layers of mesh paneling and shadowy bars from the internal structure spill out onto the surrounding walls. During the day the work can be appreciated under natural lighting, in this quieter state your attention is drawn to the deep saturated colours and the rhythmic orchestration of space and mass.

Bauer's light-pictures are a contemporary expression to the aesthetic language of early modernism that influenced his craft and design training in Germany. His father Carl Bauer trained in architecture at the famous German design school, the Bauhaus and Frank grew up in a world in which the functional, constructivist and primary coloured aesthetic of the school were all pervasive. In Lichtbild #016, Bauer combines his aesthetic considerations with the modernist notion of integrity to materials and the spirit of early modernist furniture is kept alive in Bauer's formal cubic structure which is not concealed, but integrated, so as to reveal its function as a framework from which to hang the perforated aluminum panels.

Practicing for over thirty years, Bauer's jewellery, metalwork and lighting has become synonymous with a reductivist sensibility and a rigorous, precise clarity of concept and execution. As a nationally significant designer-maker, the Gallery has collected a range of Bauer's jewellery and metalwork since the 1970s, however Lichtbild #016 is the first major contemporary light design to enter the collection. Lichtbild #016 is displayed in gallery nine and was a gift of Michael Drew, Penelope Hackett-Jones, Anne Kidman, David McKee and Graham Prior through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation Collectors' Club 2004.

Robert Reason
Curator of European and Australian Decorative Arts
Art Gallery of South Australia

Image:
Frank Bauer, born Germany 1942, arrived Australia 1971
Lichtbild #016, 2003, Goodwood, Adelaide
stainless steel, perforated anodized aluminum, Xenon lamps, 85.0 x 160.0 x 15.0 cm
Gift of Michael Drew, Penelope Hackett-Jones, Anne Kidman, David McKee and Graham Prior through the Art Gallery Foundation Collectors' Club 2004.