Nicolas Party. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Hoam Museum of Art
Nicolas Party
PROJECT
Nicolas Party loves to pepper his works with apposite references to his artistic forebears. In Octopus, Party draws inspiration from the Symbolist movement, specifically Odilon Redon’s Wonders of the Sea works from the early 1900s. Across cultures, the octopus represents intelligence, mystery and transformation. Here Party creates an otherworldly, dreamlike scene, rendering the animal in pastel. Recognising pastel as an overlooked medium, Party studied its history and embraced its intensity of colour and the speed with which it allowed him to work. By using pastel, Party forms an immediate, direct relationship with the canvas, finding beauty in the fragility of the process and the medium.
The acquisition of this artist’s work is supported Daniel Xu & Flora Huang Foundation
ABOUT
Based in New York, Nicolas Party creates familiar yet unsettling portraits and landscapes in soft pastel. He works across different scales, from small works to monumental installations and murals. Growing up in Switzerland, he had an early interest in landscape and the natural world, leading him to explore the traditions of European landscape painting. Party studied at the Lausanne School of Art in Switzerland and Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. He has exhibited at major galleries and museums including Hoam Museum of Art (South Korea); Museum Frieder Burda (Germany); Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (US); MASI Lugano (Switzerland); Brooklyn Museum, New York (US); Hepworth Wakefield (UK); M+ (Hong Kong); and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (US).