Different Midnights
A Solo Exhibition by Mark Niehus
Gallery 1
29 Aug – 18 Sep
Opening Reception: Saturday 29th August, 2-4pm
Mark Niehus is an Australian multi-disciplinary artist based in Port Adelaide, working across painting, moving image, and poetry. With a background in photography and interface design, including professional roles overseas, his practice merges technical precision with intuitive experimentation.
Known for his intersecting line language that achieves harmony by containing light and colour into interrelating shapes compressed into the geometry of the human form, bringing to the surface the complex nature of thought and emotion. Creating intimate, layered, and emotionally charged compositions that resonant and move between abstraction and subtle narratives.
He has exhibited extensively in Adelaide since 2007 and most recently presented a solo show in Melbourne, with another exhibited here at West End Art Space. His moving image works have been screened at international film festivals, including the Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. He has published a book of poems, featured in literary journals, and been a finalist for numerous art and film festival prizes.
Different Midnights is a collection of paintings, moving image and free verse that explore the various ways individuals experience solitude.
By bringing these different stories together we are reminded of our commonalities and the value of being alone, provoking us to question how do we experience solitude.
It’s 12 am and each art work frames a life, sharing only the digestion of a day spent in the same city. Alone, not connected, dwelling, quietly celebrating or reconciling their lives, capturing each of their Different Midnights.
With paintings central to the exhibition, Niehus has continued to refine his creative process and elevate his work to new levels by exploring deeper still the degree that one can abstract a concept of emotion through the geometry of the human form, and still evoke the empathy and curiosity needed to enter the viewer into the lottery that is the transformative power of art.