The fantastical universe of Swiss artist Nicolas Party takes center stage this autumn with his first solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London, marking a significant milestone in the painter’s career. Bringing together a new suite of landscape, treescape, and portrait paintings, the exhibition both honors and challenges time-honored traditions of representational painting through Party’s instantly recognizable style. It will coincide with Frieze London.

Widely celebrated for his virtuoso use of soft pastel, his works recall the timelessness of Renaissance portraiture, early modernist landscapes, and Surrealist atmospheres, yet they remain entirely of the present, imbued with a heightened sense of color and form that verges on the dreamlike.

As with many of his major exhibitions, Party has conceived the show as a total environment. Extending his painterly vision beyond the canvases themselves, he integrates architectural interventions and immersive wall works to amplify the psychological intensity of his subjects. For this exhibition, the gallery’s walls are steeped in an electrifying blue. The effect is theatrical, it is an invitation to step inside Party’s universe!

Party’s presence in the UK this year extends beyond London. His exhibition ‘Nicolas Party: Copper & Dust’ is currently on view at The Holburne Museum in Bath. There, the artist has created a monumental site-specific pastel mural that directly responds to a work from the museum’s historic collection.