Nicolas Party: Mezzotint

Glasgow Print Studio is thrilled to announce a major solo exhibition of new work in print and site specific wall drawings by Nicolas Party, programmed as part of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2016. The key elements that make up Party’s practise; seamlessly traversing means of production from painting to print, via sculpture, intensive chalk pastel works and direct drawing and painting to the wall as well as interactive works, chime with the core values at the heart of the year's GI Festival. That is, creating a conversation around production, making, and the symbiotic relationship between traditional method and new technology. As well as reflecting on the ideology at the heart of this year's festival, Party's work dovetails with the aims GPS has for GI and for our organisation as a whole: to examine what print can be and to make it exciting and accessible for all. Party begins with objects that are familiar to us in our daily lives and renders them in a way that heightens or exaggerates their presence. Coffee pots, cups, rocks, fruit, plants and portraits – both human and animal – often appear in his work as recurring motifs. Party likens these motifs to ‘characters in a play’ that interact both with and within the space; the gallery space becomes the stage within which Party’s play is set. Party creates 'little conversations' via interactions between depicted subjects and objects presented via the medium of the mezzotint and large-scale, site-specific wall murals. 'Conversations' take place between pots and portraits, trees and rocks and so on. The viewer is invited to engage with these 'little conversations'. Exhibited alongside the prints and mural, Party has chosen to display the copper plates from which the mezzotint prints were taken. Party’s intention is to provoke debate and discussion around notions of process and materials; the act of making, and not only that, but the fact that “things are made here.” (The workshop where the prints were created lies directly above the gallery on the second floor of GPS.) Party was an active graffiti artist in the 1990s, prior to studying at the Lausanne School of Art, Switzerland, and the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland. His projects range from site-specific mural-interventions to refined pastel on canvas works, often with a playful surrealist bent. Through the appropriation of certain themes and gestures, broad influences can be identified in Party’s work, with landscapes derived from David Hockney, colour palettes borrowed from the Fauves, painted collage referencing Matisse’s cut-outs, and figures from the Swiss painter Félix Vallotton.

Suitable for
Any age

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/mw1680?id=EVENT553229