Frank Bauer

Designer and metalworker, Frank Bauer is renowned for his innovative design work ranging from jewellery and spectacles to low-voltage lighting systems, columns and mobile wind-sculptures. Bauer’s sculptural lighting artworks demonstrate a dramatic play of light and colour through the use of perforated anodised aluminium panels displayed in highly decorative three-dimensional grid structures. The light pieces can be experienced as large-scale illuminated paintings, kinetic sculptures with layers of vibrant contrasting colours and ambient light sources. Though very complex in their construction, the ‘light paintings’ also create an atmosphere of serenity and calmness. The reflected layers of colour, light and shadow of these light works expand on the ‘moire’ (kinetic) effect and produce a mesmerising and perplexing interplay with the viewer. Frank Bauer trained, worked and taught in Germany, London and Sydney. His work is represented in private collections, museums and galleries in Australia, Europe and the United States, he currently works from his Adelaide based studio.

‘Frank Bauer works as a goldsmith, lighting designer and kinetic sculptor. He brings a contemporary expression to the aesthetic language of early Modernism that influenced his craft and design training in Germany. The precise engineering and craftsmanship that characterises his geometric and reductive jewellery is reflected in a larger scale in his wall-mounted light sculptures. Using his patented system of small, low-voltages lamps as visual connectors through a complex and rhythmical structure of perforated anodised aluminium sheets, Bauer orchestrates reflected, coloured light in an abstraction of the technical systems of the contemporary built environment.’ Robert Bell, Senior Curator, Decorative Arts & Design, National Gallery of Australia (deceased 2018)