1. London Museums Close Galleries Due to Record-Breaking Heat Wave.
London museums have closed their galleries due to a heat wave in the UK, which has prompted the country's first ever red-level heat warning and the declaration of a national emergency. The British Museum closed its galleries on its top floors and closed early on Monday and Tuesday to ensure the safety and comfort of staff and visitors. The Victoria & Albert Museum maintained regular operating hours but closed galleries that reached 30C or above and distributed fans and cold water to front-of-house staff. The PCS union has called on museums across the UK to close during the heat wave, which has already caused temperatures to surpass 104F and is expected to reach 106F this week. The heat has also caused issues such as melting a runway at Luton airport and making a road in eastern England resemble a skatepark.
2. Nicholas Party in HongKong
Nicolas Party is a highly sought-after artist whose works have been widely shared on social media and have attracted significant attention from collectors, galleries, and speculators. His brightly colored, cartoonish artworks are characterized by their use of vibrant, saturated hues and references to various art historical movements such as Pop art, Surrealism, Fauvism, and Romantic landscapes. Party's art is also influenced by his background as a graffiti artist in Switzerland in the 1990s, and his exhibitions often feature walls painted in different colors, creating an immersive experience for viewers.
Party's upcoming exhibition "Red Forest" at Hauser & Wirth in Hong Kong will showcase 13 new pastel-on-linen works that continue his exploration of color and its ability to transform a composition, mood, or space. The exhibition will be divided into three rooms, each painted a different color, and will include both portraits and landscapes. Party's portraits often feature subjects with similar features, such as round puffballs of hair, wide almond eyes, defined noses, and thin lips, rendered in unnaturally colored skin that is either the same or complementary to the monochromatic backgrounds. These works reference the tradition of portraiture, but do not convey any personal information about their subjects. Party's landscapes, on the other hand, depict fantastical, abstracted scenes that are often untouched and devoid of human presence. These works are characterized by their flat, geometric shapes and saturated, unrealistic colors, which highlight their artificiality.
However, the exhibition will also include three paintings titled "Red Forest" that depart from Party's distinctive style and are more naturalistically rendered, depicting a red forest in autumnal shades of orange, yellow, and red. These works provide a contrast to the other, more fantastical pieces in the exhibition and demonstrate Party's versatility as an artist. Overall, "Red Forest" promises to be a playful, technicolor experience that immerses viewers in a world where art is not only seen, but also experienced and felt.
3. Who is Nicholas Party?
Nicolas Party is a Swiss artist known for his playful, vibrant artworks that challenge the established conventions of traditional painting genres such as portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. Working in a variety of media, including pastel paintings and murals, Party's practice is focused on exploring the possibilities of paint as a medium of representation. His art is influenced by his experience with 3D animation and digital fabrication processes, and often features figures that are recognizably of their genre but are not necessarily human or personal.
Time is a recurring theme in Party's work, both in the temporal nature of his installations, which are often painted over after an exhibition period, and in his exploration of time as a concept. For example, in his solo exhibition "Sunrise, Sunset" at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Party created a series of 20 wall paintings of sunrises or sunsets, inviting viewers to consider their place in the cycle of time. Party also frequently layers his artworks, both in terms of the media he uses and the way he installs his exhibitions. For example, his murals often serve as backdrops to his paintings, and he has created artist-run spaces where he and his colleagues curate exhibitions that are installed on top of murals, creating a layered "layer cake" effect.
Overall, Party's art is characterized by its accessibility and universal language, as well as its complex, layered nature and exploration of the materiality of paint and the concept of time. His work invites viewers to engage with art in a playful, immersive way and consider the role of representation and the construction of atmosphere and personality.