Nicolas Party attributes his captivation with nature to a childhood spent amid Switzerland’s picturesque natural scenery. ‘Landscape’ (2023), with its lush green trees and a billowing cloud, is among his works of forests and mountains, which endure this lifelong fascination. Drawing on a range of art historical references—from 19th-century Swiss landscape artists to Chinese ‘shan shui’ painting—Party challenges and celebrates traditional conventions of representational image-making. A remarkable synthesis of these influences, ‘Landscape’ is composed of a soft, yet delicately textured surface, which draws the viewer into a wary, gray horizon. Party first used pastel in 2013 and was quickly enamored by the delicacy of the medium and its physicality. In ‘Landscape,’ he captures an ephemeral moment using a medium with a history of impermanence. Under Party’s careful hand, the landscape is rendered on a monumental scale that asserts the permanence of this transcendent vista.
About the artist
Born in Lausanne in 1980, Party is a figurative painter who has achieved critical admiration for his familiar yet unsettling landscapes, portraits, and still lifes that simultaneously celebrate and challenge conventions of representational painting. His works are primarily created in soft pastel, an idiosyncratic choice of medium in the 21st Century, and one that allows for exceptional degrees of intensity and fluidity in his depictions of objects both natural and manmade. Transforming these objects into abstracted, biomorphic shapes, Party suggests deeper connections and meanings. His unique visual language has coalesced in a universe of fantastical characters and motifs where perspective is heightened and skewed to uncanny effect.
Artwork images © Nicolas Party. Photos: Thomas Barratt
Portrait of Nicolas Party. Photo: Axel Dupeux