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
-
Seven up in an ID.Buzz – Volkswagen’s latest all-electric MPV deserves a brighter futureWe see if the VW ID.Buzz is cut out for everyday life by taking a road trip in Volkswagen’s newly extended electric micro-bus
-
Vestre’s neo-brutalist furniture will bring ‘a little madness’ to Paris Fashion WeekBound for Paris Men’s Fashion Week this month, Norwegian furniture brand Vestre reveals a sculptural bench and mirror created with designer Vincent Laine and fashion creative Willy Cartier – the latest outcome of its risk-taking ‘a little madness’ initiative
-
For its latest runway show, Zegna creates a serene oasis in DubaiThe Italian fashion house took over the Dubai Opera for a S/S 2026 show that proposed a lived-in elegance, drawing inspiration from Dubai’s sunbaked landscapes and Zegna’s birthplace of Trivero
-
The glory years of the Cannes Film Festival are captured in a new photo book‘Cannes’ by Derek Ridgers looks back on the photographer's time at the Cannes Film Festival between 1984 and 1996
-
Technology, art and sculptures of fog: LUMA Arles kicks off the 2025/26 seasonThree different exhibitions at LUMA Arles, in France, delve into history in a celebration of all mediums; Amy Serafin went to explore
-
Contemporary artist collective Poush takes over Château La CosteMembers of Poush have created 160 works, set in and around the grounds of Château La Coste – the art, architecture and wine estate in Provence
-
The women making digital art before the internet'Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991' at Kunsthalle Vienna & recently at MUDAM Luxembourg, doesn’t pretend to portray the totality of tech in art, instead taking the specific 31-year period of the title to shed light upon 48 women artists who engaged critically with computation
-
Architecture, sculpture and materials: female Lithuanian artists are celebrated in NîmesThe Carré d'Art in Nîmes, France, spotlights the work of Aleksandra Kasuba and Marija Olšauskaitė, as part of a nationwide celebration of Lithuanian culture
-
‘Who has not dreamed of seeing what the eye cannot grasp?’: Rencontres d’Arles comes to the south of FranceLes Rencontres d’Arles 2024 presents over 40 exhibitions and nearly 200 artists, and includes the latest iteration of the BMW Art Makers programme
-
Van Gogh Foundation celebrates ten years with a shape-shifting drone display and The Starry NightThe Van Gogh Foundation presents ‘Van Gogh and the Stars’, anchored by La Nuit Etoilée, which explores representations of the night sky, and the 19th-century fascination with the cosmos
-
Marisa Merz’s unseen works at LaM, Lille, have a uniquely feminine spiritMarisa Merz’s retrospective at LaM, Lille, is a rare showcase of her work, pursuing life’s most fragile, transient details
