Wall-filling pastel murals destined to return to dust after their brief five-month life, a contemporary artwork engaged in a haunting dialogue with a centuries-old royal placenta jar and a high-priced triptych toppled by an inattentive visitor. All this and more can be found at “Dust,” the compelling solo exhibition of Nicolas Party at the Hoam Museum of Art in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province. The show marks the Swiss-born art sensation’s largest survey to date, featuring 73 paintings and sculptures.
Let’s begin with the most recent headline-grabber. It was revealed this week that one of Party’s oil triptychs, titled “Triptych with Trees,” was accidentally knocked over by a young visitor distracted by their phone on Sept. 18. The foldable artwork, standing about 50 centimeters tall, had been perched on a matching plinth. Just weeks earlier, a similar piece by Party, “Triptych with Red Forest,” was sold for $350,000 by Hauser & Wirth at Frieze Seoul.
After the mishap, the work was immediately removed from public view. Fortunately, the museum reported that the only damage was two screws that came loose from one of the hinges. Following a quick repair and consultation with the artist, the triptych was back on display by Sept. 24. Among the standouts of the show are five expansive pastel murals that dominate the walls of the museum’s main lobby staircase and galleries. It took the 44-year-old artist six weeks to breathe life into these immersive, surrealist landscapes — ranging from a green cave and a vivid red waterfall to a plume of smoke rising from an unknown explosion.
Yet, despite the painstaking effort behind them, the murals are destined to vanish forever at the exhibition’s close in January. “It’s something made of dust that will go back to dust. … But (when you think about it) eventually, everything goes back to dust. It’s about how you conceive time,” Party reflected during a press preview. The fleeting nature of 스포츠 these murals aligns well with the themes he subtly explores throughout the show via the images of blank-faced deities, organlike blobs, dinosaurs and nature devoid of humans — all reflecting cycles of birth, death, extinction and the transience of life.
The concept of dust and impermanence also resonates with his choice of medium. Pastels, made of a powdery substance that is inherently fragile and ephemeral, have been Party’s go-to material since 2013. His fascination began with what he described as a “love at first sight” encounter with a Picasso pastel, captivated by its ability to evoke a so-called “mask of dust.” The artist pointed out that pastels, despite their affordability and ease of use, have historically been disvalued and underutilized compared to oil and acrylic paints.
In 18th-century Europe, particularly in France, pastels became associated with women as more professional female artists gained easier access to the medium. However, male-dominated art institutions reinforced a gendered bias, likening pastel’s powdery texture to women’s makeup. This stereotype reduced it to a “feminine” material, relegating those who used it to the status of hobbyists or amateurs, and confining their work to “inferior” genres like portraiture and still life. “And to be honest, it never really came back from that,” he remarked. “But I strongly believe pastel is a wonderful medium and I hope everybody will use it.”
