Landscape, 2023
Soft pastel on linen
149.9 x 127 cm / 59 x 50 inches
About the art
‘Landscape’ (2023) embodies these tensions Party is known for. At once strange and familiar, ‘Landscape’s unsettling composition depicts elongated topiary, box hedges and cypress trees bathed in the pink light of a scarlet sun, their pale reflections hovering in a still pool of water beneath. Party’s fascination with the natural world is evident, as is his experience working as a 3D animator. “We’re so used to seeing computer-generated images now,” he says, “it has a big impact on how we see all images.”
About the artist
Nicolas Party (b. 1980) is a contemporary Swiss painter and sculptor who lives and works in New York. Known for his bright and fantastical images, Party uses color to explore the dreamlike and uncanny aspects of the world around us; from his signature pastel hues to pigmented neons, alpine greens and deep ultramarines, his work creates a throughline from twentieth century Expressionism and Fauvism to modern day computer-generated imagery. His chosen medium of pastels is in itself contemporizing, and provides an idiosyncratic throwback to the 18th century.