[Gallery Walk] The Wizard of Pastels, Coloring Hoam Museum of Art with Hues

'Nicolas Party: Dust' Exhibition
73 Works Including Paintings, Sculptures, and Pastel Murals
Yongin Hoam Art Museum, Until January 19, 2025

"The exhibition focused on Korean ancient art collections that embody Korea's long history, complex media, and images. At first, it was unfamiliar, but it became a great learning opportunity, and I learned a lot about Korean history that I did not know before."

'Waterfall 2'.
[Photo by Hoam Museum of Art]

Swiss artist Nicolas Party (44), who contemplates the changes between humans and nature through dreamlike pastel works, presents various new pieces inspired by Korean ancient art. One work depicts an expressionless woman looking sideways, whose upper body is a celadon juja (靑磁 注子, a celadon wine vessel). The celadon piece, shaped like the gourd bottle of the Taoist immortal Li Tieguai (李鐵拐), one of the Eight Immortals from the Tang Dynasty, is borrowed from the Leeum Museum's collection 'Celadon Dongchae Lotus Pattern Juja'.

Nicolas Party's first solo exhibition in Korea, "Nicolas Party: Dust," will be held from August 31 to January 19 of next year at Hoam Art Museum in Cheoin-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do. In this exhibition, the artist showcases 20 new pastel paintings inspired by Korean ancient art, the corresponding ancient artworks, and a total of 48 paintings and sculptures encompassing his overall work.

On the 29th, at the Hoam Art Museum in Yongin-si, Gyeonggi Province, artist Nicholas Party is explaining his work at the preview briefing for the exhibition "Dust."
[Image source=Yonhap News]

For this exhibition, Party stayed at the museum for six weeks and created five large pastel murals on the lobby and interior walls of the exhibition hall. These works, inspired by Joseon Dynasty folk paintings and ceramics, are only available during the exhibition period and will be discarded afterward.

Nicolas Party has created his unique imagery by referencing various artists, motifs, styles, and materials from ancient to modern art history. Known for reinterpreting traditional painting genres such as landscapes, still lifes, and portraits through pastel painting?a medium popular in 18th-century Europe but later forgotten?he unveils new works reinterpreting Korean ancient art in this exhibition.

During the preparation stage, Party referenced the Leeum Museum's ancient art collection and created eight new portrait paintings inspired by symbols from the Joseon Dynasty's 'Ten Longevity Screens (Sipjangsaengdo 10-gokbyeong)' and Kim Hong-do's 'Military Ship Painting (Gunseondo),' imagining eight immortals (Palsun) in his works.

Nicholas Party's "Portrait with Audience" (2024).
[Photo courtesy of Hoam Art Museum]

Upon entering the museum, visitors are greeted by the work 'Cave,' in front of which the Joseon Dynasty white porcelain 'Baekja Taeho' is displayed. The 'Dinosaur' series is exhibited alongside the image of a dragon (龍) depicted on a bronze cloud and dragon-patterned yunpan (a type of percussion instrument). The 'Wrinkles' and 'Insects' series are displayed together with Jeong Seon's 'Nobaekdo,' blending Party's paintings naturally with ancient artworks throughout the exhibition space. The 'Wrinkles' and 'Insects' series reference the anatomical human depictions by 16th-century Italian painter Bronzino and insect imagery by 17th-century Flemish painter Jan van Kessel the Elder. The character for 'life' (壽) is depicted as an aged pine and cypress tree, placed alongside Jeong Seon's 'Nobaekdo,' creating a mysterious atmosphere.

The large pastel murals painted on the walls of the Hoam Art Museum lobby and exhibition hall also attract attention. The 5.5-meter large work 'Waterfall' on the wall of the central staircase in the lobby references the waterfall paintings by 19th-century realist artist Gustave Courbet, but the water forcefully pouring between red stones offers a fantastic and dreamlike impression.

The exhibition of 'Taeho,' a container used to store the umbilical cords of Joseon Dynasty royalty, displayed in front of the large mural 'Cave' painted by Party for this exhibition.
[Photo by Hoam Art Museum]

The 9-meter large mural 'Cave' (2024), inspired by the Joseon Dynasty white porcelain 'Baekja Taeho' donated by former Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee to the National Museum of Korea, references Belgian Symbolist painter William Degouve de Nuncques' use of a single tone to express the depth of a cave, depicting a surreal cave landscape. The 'Baekja Taeho' porcelain is displayed in front of it, making it appear as a single artwork.

Gwak Jun-young, exhibition planning director at Leeum Museum who curated the exhibition, said, "Nicolas Party is an artist who expands the contemporary possibilities of pastel painting and freely references and samples various elements of art history. In a maze-like space, passing through archways, cultural symbols from East and West, past and present, intersect in unexpected ways on this unfamiliar stage, stimulating our imagination."