Nicolas Party's Immersive MASILugano Exhibition Blends Pastel with Kitsch

Nicolas Party (born 1980 in Lausanne) presents a solo exhibition at MASILugano that occupies an entire floor of the museum, functioning as a total installation. The show opens with two enigmatic giant head sculptures that balance kitsch and refinement, leading into a stage-like environment resembling a house or city that both enhances and questions the artworks. The central installation features Party's characteristic pastel-on-canvas works—hieratic and colorful—while side niches display four black-and-white pieces and four mural paintings that mix post-romantic, surreal, comic, and literary atmospheres. The exhibition is organized by genre, including landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, where pastel creates a tactile, ambiguous, and mischievous quality. Party's works are deliberately allusive, with vague referents; influences include classical harmony, the Return to Order, Surrealism, and Romanticism, but these blend into something that transcends simple comparison. The artist's method encourages an instinctive reading, with forms that envelop the viewer in sensual torpor, refined yet anti-graceful faces, and landscapes that are both soothing and threatening. Anthropomorphic fruits in still lifes epitomize the ironic sensuality pervading the show. Intellectually, the works challenge expressive canons and the reliability of visual perception, reflecting a contemporary era dominated by virtual imagery. The review was written by Stefano Castelli.