For her first solo exhibition in Austria, Nathalie Du Pasquier presents a comprehensive journey through her work. On show at the Kunsthalle Wien, and curated by Luca Lo Pinto, the exhibition brings together paintings, patterns, sculptures, designs and other creations covering 35 years of her career, to construct a new understanding of her artistic development.
Born in Bordeaux, Milan-based Du Pasquier began her career in product design, becoming the youngest founding member of influential Milanese design and architecture collective Memphis at 23. In 1987, she switched her main focus to painting, and now sees herself primarily as a visual artist.
‘Big Objects Not Always Silent’ strives to see how Du Pasquier looks at still life in a fresh way, understanding how she considers and plays with the complex arrangement of forms and their spaces. Choreographed intuitively through their expressive and emotive relations, the exhibition is not structured chronologically, with Lo Pinto and Du Pasquier choosing to place pieces from completely different periods of her career side-by-side. Organised as different rooms or ‘houses’ in ‘a city’, each room presents a creative phase in order to demonstrate a natural evolution, as well as highlight recurring elements and processes in her work. ‘In the end,’ the artist says, ‘I wanted to create a “setup” with the elements collected during this long period, which could be considered as one single piece.'
Some of these include a ‘House of Drawings’, featuring works from her period as a designer in the 1980s, as well as her return to drawing in 2009; and ‘House 2’, which showcases paintings created from meticulously arranged sets of objects. The ‘streets’ of the installation city are adorned with linking pieces and carpets that Du Pasquier has designed over the years. As part of the exhibition, Kunsthalle Wien will also present a series of serigraphy workshops and tours open to the public.
A wide range of works are included, such as paintings, patterns, sculptures, designs, ceramics, carpets and other creations, from the beginnings of her career as a young designer to her segue into painting as a visual artist today
Du Pasquier and curator Luca Lo Pinto chose not to structure the exhibition chronologically, instead choosing to place pieces from completely different periods of her career side-by-side. Pictured: Citta, 1984. Right: Big Drawing, 2013
Organised as different rooms or ‘houses’ in ‘a city’, each presents a creative phase to demonstrate a natural evolution, as well as highlight recurring elements and processes in her work. Du Pasquier looks at still life in a fresh way, through how she considers and plays with the arrangement of forms
The ‘streets’ of the installation city are adorned with pieces that do not quite fit into any room, but somehow seem to link the different themes and phases
‘What bores me about the art world is the myth that art is so precious and that it should be so expensive. Art is just what you do. It is not less worthwhile to make a pattern or a carpet than a painting in the end,’ the artist says. Pictured: C.R.A.F.T., 2002
INFORMATION
‘Big Objects Not Always Silent’ is on view until 13 November. For more information, visit the Kunsthalle Wien website
Photography courtesy Kunsthalle Wien
ADDRESS
Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier
Museumsplatz 1
1070 Vienna
TELEPHONE
43.152 1890
-
Crispin at Studio Voltaire, in Clapham, is a feast for all the sensesNew restaurant Crispin at Studio Voltaire is the latest opening from the brains behind Bistro Freddie and Bar Crispin, with interiors by Jermaine Gallagher
-
Vivienne Westwood’s personal wardrobe goes up for sale in landmark Christie’s auctionThe proceeds of ’Vivienne Westwood: The Personal Collection’, running this June, will go to the charitable causes she championed during her lifetime
-
Montblanc’s leather goods evolution offers peak styleMontblanc takes design inspiration from its iconic writing archive for new collections of leather goods
-
Damien Hirst takes over Château La CosteDamien Hirst’s ‘The Light That Shines’ at Château La Coste includes new and existing work, and takes over the entire 500-acre estate in Provence
-
Tia-Thuy Nguyen encases Chateau La Coste oak tree in tonne of stainless steel stripsTia-Thuy Nguyen’s ‘Flower of Life’ lives in the grounds of sculpture park and organic winery Château La Coste in France
-
Paris art exhibitions: a guide to exhibitions this weekendAs Emily in Paris fever puts the city of love at the centre of the cultural map, stay-up-to-date with our guide to the best Paris art exhibitions
-
Cyprien Gaillard on chaos, reorder and excavating a Paris in fluxWe interviewed French artist Cyprien Gaillard ahead of his major two-part show, ‘Humpty \ Dumpty’ at Palais de Tokyo and Lafayette Anticipations (until 8 January 2023). Through abandoned clocks, love locks and asbestos, he dissects the human obsession with structural restoration
-
Remembering Pierre Soulages (1919-2022), a pioneer of post-war abstractionPierre Soulages, the pioneering French printmaker, sculptor and ‘painter of black’, has died aged 102
-
Reclaim the Earth, urge artists at Paris’ Palais de TokyoWe discover the group exhibition ‘Reclaim the Earth’, a wake-up call for humans to reconsider our relationship with the planet (until 4 September 2022)
-
Jason Boyd Kinsella’s curious portraits dissect the architecture of humanBased on the Myers-Briggs personality test, Jason Boyd Kinsella’s new portrait series, on show at Perrotin in Paris, examines the building blocks of human existence
-
Kader Attia dissects multiculturalism, colonialism and capitalism in Doha showKader Attia addresses postcolonial trauma and the need for psychiatric repair in a new show, ‘On Silence', at Doha's Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art
