Artist: Jonny Niesche
Exhibition title: Cosmos Cosmetics
Venue: Minerva, Sydney, Australia
Date: June 17 – July 23, 2016
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Minerva, Sydney
Anne Carson tells us that the word Kosmos – κόσμος – which she translates as ‘ornament’, “implies in Greek all kinds of ‘good order,’ from the arrangement of planets in the sky to the style with which an individual wears her hat.”
Our words cosmos and cosmetics stem from this same Greek root, Kosmos. Both words denote an ordering and re-ordering of the visible, the imposition of a certain relation between boundaries.
Cosmology is a cosmetic pursuit: the ordering of bodies and surfaces – celestial or otherwise – draped into coherent new arrangements, in keeping with the needs and beliefs of those who construct them.
“According to one ancient cosmology,” writes Carson, “cosmos was first assembled out of chaos, when Zeus threw a veil over the head of the goddess of the underworld, Chthonie, and married her.”
If we understand this myth, chaos is not dissolved or tamed away by order – it’s just ornamentally veiled. Order is a framing, a temporary cosmetic injunction which remains always provisional.
The veil is all surface; almost nothing but the presence of separation itself. Separation as the basis of ordering; the cosmic-cosmetic bestowal of a new prosthetic surface.
κόσμος: universe, arrangement, adornment, embellishment, world, make up, making up. “Nothing goes as deep as decoration,” writes Michel Serres, “ornamentation is as vast as the world.”
From the current order of appearances, new orders can be extracted. Any critique of present conditions demands a belief in this basic alchemical premise; the transmutability of the hitherto opaque – a re-draping of the veils.
“Cosmos and cosmetics, appearance and essence have the same origin,” Serres reminds us. “Adornment equals order, and embellishment is equivalent to law […] Every veil is a magnificently historiated display.”
Anne Carson, Dirt and Desire: The Phenomenology of Female Pollution in Antiquity, in “Constructions of the Classical Body” ed. James I. Porter (University of Michigan Press, 1999) p 89
Michel Serres, The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley (Continuum, 2008), p 32
Jonny Niesche, Haptic rule of thumb, 2016
Vibrance Primsmatic Flake autopaint and steel, 1 × 9 × 245cm
Jonny Niesche, Haptic rule of thumb, 2016 (detail)
Vibrance Primsmatic Flake autopaint and steel, 1 × 9 × 245cm
Jonny Niesche, Veils on Veils, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 239 × 120 × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, Veils on Veils, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 239 × 120 × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, Veils on Veils, 2016 (detail)
Voile, steel and autopaint, 239 × 120 × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, Peacock’s tail, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 110 × 120 × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, Peacock’s tail, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 110 × 120 × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, Return to the world, 2016
Vibrance Primsmatic Flake autopaint and steel (ceiling mounted) 340 × 9 × 1cm
Jonny Niesche, Moving through atmospheres, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 133 × 160 × 1.5 cm
Jonny Niesche, Moving through atmospheres, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 133 × 160 × 1.5 cm
Jonny Niesche, Cadence loop #9, 2016
Vibrance Primsmatic Flake autopaint and steel, 12 × 1 × 185cm
Jonny Niesche, There is nothing in language…, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 128cm × 168cm × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, There is nothing in language…, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 128cm × 168cm × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, There is nothing in language…, 2016 (detail)
Voile, steel and autopaint, 128cm × 168cm × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, … that was not first in the bouquet, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 130 × 168 × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, … that was not first in the bouquet, 2016
Voile, steel and autopaint, 130 × 168 × 1.5cm
Jonny Niesche, Cadence loop #4, 2016
Vibrance Primsmatic Flake autopaint and steel, 4 × 8 × 240cm
Jonny Niesche, Cadence loop #4, 2016 (detail)
Vibrance Primsmatic Flake autopaint and steel, 4 × 8 × 240cm