Artist Nicolas Party invites viewers to an eerily saturated pastel world

Nicolas Party is debuting his latest set of large-scale pastel murals at the Hoam Museum of Art, but they will only be available to view until January next year. After that, they will be removed — forever.

Installation view of ″Nicolas Party: Dust″ at the Hoam Museum of Art. The wall mural is titled ″Clouds,″ and the painting is ″Portrait with Owls″ (2021). [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

YONGIN, Gyeonggi — Nicolas Party is debuting his latest set of large-scale pastel murals at the Hoam Museum of Art, but they will only be available to view until January next year. After that, they will be removed — forever.

The five commissioned pieces took the 44-year-old Swiss visual artist six weeks to finish them on the site, painted directly on the museum’s walls, a period longer than most other artists. The murals are all highly saturated with uncanny depictions of nature — like a red waterfall, smoky clouds or a green cave — boasting a quality that would be a shame to go to waste. Still, it’s only inevitable that they disappear, Party says, because “eventually, everything goes back to dust.”

Nicolas Party in front of his latest mural piece "Waterfall" at the Hoam Museum of Art [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

The temporality and mortality of these murals are what allows the artist to appreciate his artworks more and connect better with the space he is working in. This approach is reflected in his artworks by his frequent use of terrestrial motifs — trees, waterfalls, caves, mountainsides and even dinosaurs — which ultimately explore the ideas of the life cycle from birth to death.

His solo exhibition titled "Dust" at Hoam in Yongin, Gyeonggi, is Party’s largest survey that presents 73 paintings, sculptures and the murals. Of the paintings, 20 are new. A portion of Party’s art has also been arranged alongside a selection of traditional Korean artworks and antique pieces from the Leeum Museum of Art’s collection as an attempt to encourage comparisons between western and eastern art.

Installation view of ″Nicolas Party: Dust″ at the Hoam Museum of Art. The wall mural is titled ″Mountains,″ and in front is the ″Miniature Banner Pole in the Shape of a Dragon Head″ from the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392). [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

Installation view of ″Nicolas Party: Dust″ at the Hoam Museum of Art. The wall mural is titled ″Tree Trunks,″ and the painting is ″Portrait with Mushrooms″ (2019). [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

The title “Dust” alludes to pastel, an art medium that produces large amounts of dust. This reason may be why pastel tends to be underused among artists nowadays, but it’s actually much more affordable and portable than other materials, Party said.

The use of pastel is distinct to Party’s oeuvres, characterized by their vibrant hues that naturally blend together, as its popularity generally declined since the 18th century. Pastel was gradually disregarded within the professional art world as a legitimate art medium and was considered as a hobbyist material as it was used mainly among female European artists who painted from home while tending to domestic activities.

″Spring Landscape″ by Nicolas Party [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

When Party discovered a Picasso pastel painting in 2013, he was captivated by the forgotten medium’s ability to create powdery illusions. Since then, for over a decade now, he’s dedicated his career to pastel works, which he nicknames “masks of dust.”

In Party’s colorful, fantastical landscapes, still lifes and portraits, he actively references a wide spectrum of other works from ancient to modern and contemporary artists. His soft pastel on linen painting “Portrait with Owls” (2021) illustrates a purple Marlene Dietrich, who starred in the 1930 German film “The Blue Angel,” posing with homages of René Magritte’s owls, which were recurring images in the Belgian surrealist’s paintings.

″Portrait with Deer″ by Nicolas Party [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

“Daoist Immortals” (1776) by Kim Hong-do from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), owned by the Leeum Museum of Art [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

In this exhibition, Party tried sampling Asian art for the first time. For his latest portrait series, he invented his own versions of the Eight Immortals, which are Chinese mythological figures. The paintings come in eight different iterations that each show a woman surrounded by symbols like peaches, deer and ceramics. The exhibition placed the ancient painting “Daoist Immortals” (1776) by Kim Hong-do from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) nearby Party’s reinterpretations.

At first glance, it’s very obvious that Party’s works are eerie. His portrayals of blobs and insects in the paintings “Creases” (2020) and “Insects” (2019) are reminiscent of decay, human organs and death.

″Creases″ (2020) by Nicolas Party [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

″Insects″ (2019) by Nicolas Party [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

The eeriness also derives from Party’s imagination of a world in which humans do not exist. His landscape paintings set in all four seasons are based on the mystical scenario of time being frozen in a world sans humans. As to whether that means a period before the existence of humanity or after its extinction is up for interpretation.

The underlying complexity behind Party’s seemingly straightforward artworks is difficult to put into words. It’s the “biggest gift [to receive] as an artist,” Party says, to be able to give birth to an artwork that has a depth and personality bigger than the creator himself.

“Dust” continues until Jan. 19 next year. Hoam Museum of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays to Sundays. Round-trip shuttle bus rides between Leeum and Hoam are offered four days a week, twice a day, from Tuesdays to Fridays during the exhibition's run. Reservations on the website are mandatory. Tickets for the show are 14,000 won ($10.50) for adults.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]