City of art: Nathalie Du Pasquier’s comprehensive solo show in Vienna

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.