Nicolas Party Landscape, 2015
Ostensibly fixed dichotomies – such as figuration and abstraction, pictorial flatness and volumetric forms, tradition and technology – are subverted in Nicolas Party’s captivating pastel works that reinvigorate long-established painterly themes for the contemporary era. At first glance, the viewer registers the composition as a landscape scene, but upon closer inspection, the forms appear to metamorphose into a medley of vibrant geometric shapes; the leafless, distinctly outlined shrubs in the foreground collapse into two-dimensional circles and ovals of scarlet, sand, and chartreuse while the forestry in the background transmutes into biomorphic, abstract forms. The shades are virtually psychedelic; their prismatic harmony embodies Party’s declaration that “a color by itself doesn’t mean anything. It’s only the relationship between them that makes something happen in a painting.”
The context of Landscape is just as enigmatic: while the work refers to the traditional history of landscapes, it simultaneously evokes ghostly, hollow renderings of 3D models, which can be attributed to the artist’s 10 years spent working as a 3D animator and interest in computer art. Party ironically creates these futuristic, vacant forms in pastel, a technique that was prevalent in the late 17th century through the beginning of the 18th century. In this way, Landscape mystifyingly pays simultaneous homage to art-making modes of the past and to the technology of the future.
I don’t have much interest in what could be labelled as ‘reality’. I’m more interested in the signs, symbols and codes we’ve created for reality.
Landscape is multifaceted, recalling Magritte’s love of mystery and the flatness of the picture plane in works by Henri Rousseau or Giorgio de Chirico, while concurrently experimenting with contemporary phenomena such as computerized abstraction and psychedelia. Oscillating between convention and the cutting-edge, Landscape attests to the bold, innovative thinking that has catapulted Party to global recognition. Since 2016, Party has garnered a reputation as one of the most visionary and eminent post-internet artists, as cemented by his solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Dallas Museum of Art; Magritte Museum, Brussels; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
First revealed at The Box @ Phillips, a new exhibition space at our 450 Park Avenue location, Landscape will come under the hammer during our New York 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 16, 2019.