Dion Horstmans (1967–2025)

Sculptor of Light, Shadow, and Steel

Dion Horstmans was a New Zealand-born Australian sculptor whose electrifying geometric works in welded steel made him a towering figure in contemporary sculpture. Over a career spanning more than two decades, Horstmans became renowned for creating multi-dimensional forms that quite literally bridge the space between two and three dimensions, casting complex webs of shadows with bold linear structures. Informed by the graphic heritage of his Pacific Islander roots and the principles of geometric abstraction, his art plays with line, volume, light and shade, drawing influence from mathematical theory as well as the energy of thunder, lightning and celestial constellations. The result was a distinctive visual language – lightning-like sculptures in powder-coated steel – instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the skylines and interiors of Sydney and Melbourne. Horstmans’ three-dimensional asymmetrical constructions have become some of the most sought after pieces of modern art in Australia.

Horstmans approached art and life with inexhaustible intensity. “I’m at 110 per cent and that’s it – I’ve only got one speed,” he once said with a grin. Friends and colleagues describe him as raw, unapologetic, unfiltered and utterly authentic – a man of fierce energy yet fiercely loyal to those around him. His outsized personality earned him a reputation as “larger than life,” but equally remembered is his generosity and warmth. Within the tight-knit Bondi Beach community where he lived, Horstmans was “the shirt off his back, no questions asked” type of human. He thrived on connecting with others: “I see you, smile, say hello, and introduce myself. From that simple interaction we form a bond that helps create a community where we recognise, acknowledge and care for each other.”

Early Life and Formative Adventures

Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1967, Dion Horstmans spent his childhood moving between Aotearoa and the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. This bicultural upbringing amidst oceanic landscapes shaped his creative outlook from the start. “Ever since I could hold a pencil I’ve drawn,” Horstmans recalled, sketching the organic shapes of nature and the bold patterns of Polynesian tatau (tattoo) and carving. Formal art schooling proved a poor fit for his restless spirit – he dropped out soon after enrolling, uninspired by lectures on “dead painters” while “poor starving lentil-eating students” milled about. Instead, the young Horstmans chose the education of the open road. At 18 he left New Zealand to roam the South Pacific and beyond. “I island hopped for 9 months living on fish and coconuts…it was awesome,” he said of this period. Over the next few years he ventured through French Polynesia, backpacked across Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and eventually landed in Australia in the late 1980s. These formative adventures gave Horstmans a worldliness and self-reliance that would later infuse his art with a sense of freedom and bold exploration. “I missed out on all the early years of school. I could climb a coconut tree, catch and gut a fish, but I couldn’t add for shit,” he quipped of his unconventional upbringing.

Arriving in Sydney in his twenties, Horstmans sustained himself through odd jobs and soon found an unexpected apprenticeship in the film industry. He spent 12 years as a props maker during Australia’s movie-production boom of the 1990s and early 2000s – an experience he called “a paid education” that taught him to use the full spectrum of tools and techniques he would later apply to sculpture. Working on big-budget sets (his final film job was on Superman Returns) instilled in him a tireless work ethic, long-hour stamina, and ingenious problem-solving under pressure. “The long hours and problem solving [of film] gave me a base to work from,” he reflected. But by the mid-2000s Horstmans was ready to pursue his own art full-time: “I had had enough after finishing on Superman and have basically been sculpting since,” he said.

A pivotal creative epiphany came in 1996. Newly returned from an artifact-buying trip in Papua New Guinea – and having just become a father for the first time – Horstmans was walking along a high-tide line when he discovered a small piece of dried sea sponge washed ashore. “That little twisted sea thing became the beginning of a never ending story,” he recounted. Inspired by the sponge’s organic form, Horstmans began to sculpt rounded, curvilinear shapes he called his “roly poly works,” which, though very different from the hard-edged geometry that later defined his style, opened the gateway to his life as a sculptor. From that moment forward, making art was no longer a distant dream but a daily imperative. As he put it, “Creativity is what I breathe every day… being able to create is being able to express myself… it’s just what I do.”

A Philosophy of Line, Light and Shadow

Horstmans’ artistic practice was anchored in a singular vision: to create new volume and momentum with line, light and shadow. Working chiefly with welded steel rod and plate, he built angular, intersecting compositions that come alive in their interplay with space. His sculptures often stretch outward from the wall or ceiling, their sharp lines yielding an illusionistic quality – the solid forms collaborate with the immaterial shadows they cast to generate a further, non-material layer of complexity. Horstmans delighted in this element of optical dynamism. “Everything I have created thus far is all about the shadow,” he emphasized. “It’s not about the piece, or the colours – it’s about the shadows and the subtlety of the form the light takes on.” In Horstmans’ hands, negative space was as vital a medium as steel.

This philosophy – that sometimes what you don’t see is as important as what you do – made Horstmans something of a poet of shadows. The space around his pieces, the light that stops and starts through their angles and the shadow-scapes they cast is what excited him most. Many of his sculptures evoke bursts of pure energy frozen in mid-flight. Titles of series and works over the years included Voltage, Light Speed, and Super Sonic – fitting names for art defined by vectored motion and force. The artwork was fast, momentous and charismatic. The artist himself had a characteristically blunt take on his output: “If you asked me to describe my work I will reply, I like making things. I have never felt the need to justify it,” he said. In place of high-flown theory, Horstmans let elemental forces – light, form, gravity – do the talking in his work. For him, making art was a natural, joyful act: “To be able to create is a privilege.”

In the studio Horstmans was famously disciplined and passionate. An imposing figure with boundless energy, he treated sculpture like an extreme sport. “Working with steel, welding, is definitely a winter sport,” he joked – “hot and noisy business filled with sparks and melting metal.” He trained like an athlete to maintain the stamina his metalwork demanded: awake before dawn, followed by a strength workout, then coffee, studio, make make make, go go go. Horstmans had all the D’s – OCD, ADHD, you name it – and would hyper-focus on crafting a piece for hours on end. “I deep dive. I only stop to eat, because I train. If I didn’t train, I’d just work. It’s a constant. I’m on 24/7,” he admitted. Yet amidst the clang of fabrication, he found serenity in the creative flow: “When I’m in the flow state, when I’m making… the reality of it is aggressive and there are sparks flying and it’s physical, but in my mind it’s really quiet and really peaceful.”

Horstmans’ work is avidly collected by many of Australia’s leading architectural firms including Hassell, Woods Bagot, Bates Smart, and HGA Studios. His major public sculpture Super Sonic, installed at Collins Square in Melbourne, was at the time of installation the largest public sculpture in the Southern Hemisphere and marked a major breakthrough in his career.

Exhibitions and Public Commissions

Horstmans held a long-running association with Melbourne’s Flinders Lane Gallery (FLG), where he mounted seven solo exhibitions between 2009 and 2018. Each show pushed his exploration of form further. Notable FLG solos included Elektromont (2015), Dark Matter (2016), and Particle Fever (2018) – titles that reflect the artist’s fascination with energy, cosmology and physics. In 2020 Horstmans presented Full Circle at FLG, and in 2021 he achieved a career milestone with 10,000 Strikes at Olsen Gallery in Sydney. That exhibition – whose title evokes both the sudden flash of lightning and the hard-won mastery of 10,000 hours of practice – was a triumphant survey of his signature style, featuring an array of new steel works laced with the frenetic yet precise lines that had become his hallmark.

Horstmans also participated in high-profile group exhibitions and art events. He was a regular contributor to Sculpture by the Sea, installing his works atop the dramatic seaside cliffs of Bondi and Tamarama in Sydney, as well as at the Cottesloe Beach edition in Perth and even the international Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark. Within gallery contexts, he was featured in curated shows such as Architectonic (2015) and FUSE (2016) at FLG, which placed his work in dialogue with other leading abstract sculptors. By the late 2010s, Horstmans’ sculptures were highly collectible and began appearing at auction; his Hectic Electric series even set a personal auction record in 2022. His lineal steel works are now held in notable collections, including Artbank and the Justin Art House Museum, and were frequently spotlighted in design and lifestyle publications such as The Local Project and Habitus.

Beyond the gallery walls, Dion Horstmans made a lasting mark on Australia’s cityscapes through major public art commissions. His large-scale installations include Genesis (a twisting black steel form created for Ryde Park in Sydney), Super Sonic (a bold linear explosion mounted high in the atrium of Collins Square, Melbourne’s CBD), Elektromaster (a striking angular construction for the Central Park precinct in Sydney), and Prismatic (a sprawling ceiling sculpture for the Ibis hotel in Brisbane). Each of these projects transposed Horstmans’ studio practice into the public realm on an architectural scale – brightly powder-coated beams zigzagging overhead, throwing lattice shadows onto pavements and plazas. Working in collaboration with architects and fabricators, Horstmans proved that his aesthetic of energetic and dynamic forms could enliven large civic spaces just as effectively as gallery interiors.

Bondi Life, Family and Legacy

Though Horstmans’ art took him across Australia and overseas, his home and heart remained at Bondi Beach in Sydney. He lived in a cul-de-sac just minutes from the Pacific, a locale that nurtured his daily rituals of connection with nature and community. “What’s not to love about Bondi?” he once said. “At the end of the street where I live, there’s the Pacific Ocean – a wild, clean, ferocious, beautiful ocean that you can jump into. There’s a real sense of space. You can just re-energise. You get to reset.” This proximity to the sea kept him grounded. His Bondi home was an eclectic haven of art and memorabilia, filled with collected ornaments, the artwork of his peers, and vinyl records spinning rather than a TV flickering.

During the COVID lockdowns, when gyms and beaches were shut, Horstmans rallied his neighbours to train outside. From just two men lifting weights at the end of the street, the group grew into a legendary local training crew known as the “Kettlebell Maniacs.”

Horstmans was married twice — first to Franciska Rauwenhoff, with whom he had two daughters, and later to Grace Barnes. He is survived by his long-time partner Jo Mooney, his daughters Juna and Zaza, and an enormous circle of friends, peers, collectors, and admirers. He was also a mentor to many emerging artists, and was known for his generosity and blunt wisdom.

Those close to Horstmans describe a man of paradoxes united: bombastic yet compassionate, obsessive yet sensitive, ruggedly masculine yet unafraid to show vulnerability. He took immense pleasure in seeing a piece find its place in someone’s home. “To go into people’s homes and see a piece on the wall is incredibly humbling. It’s something I don’t ever take for granted,” he said.

His work lives on in collections across the country and in public spaces that continue to catch the light and transform it. 

He remains, in every sense, unforgettable.