Nicolas Party’s imaginary world contains no wilderness, only bright graphic artifice based loosely on nature and historical art. In his depopulated landscapes such as Trees (all works 2020), tree trunks and branches are smooth cylinders whose leaves fall like confetti from oddly shaped canopies resembling cartoon characters’ coiffures. Lush swipes of pastel confer surface texture upon expanses of flatness. Two paintings titled Sunset portray seascapes with ice floes—or are they skyscapes of clouds? These works appear alongside murals and architectural fixtures in Party’s current show, an immersive installation themed after the Sottobosco painting genre invented by 17th century Dutch artist Otto Marseus van Schrieck. Named for the Italian word for “undergrowth,” sottobosco paintings spotlight flora and fauna that would normally keep to woodland shadows. Sottoboscos are, by their very nature, factitious, portraying groups of botanical and zoological specimens that wouldn’t normally appear side-by-side. Similarly, Party depicts combinations of creatures, plants, and people commingling in improbably synthetic scenarios. The exhibition’s first floor affects an old-fashioned museum interior trimmed in faux marble and wood. Emerald and red-orange murals portray Land-of-Oz-like caverns that dwarf visitors who approach. Nearby, a dimly lit chapel installation, Sottobosco, contains an original 1663 Marseus painting. Upstairs are huge golden-complected head sculptures with masklike miens and scalps adorned with snakes, frogs and flora painted after Marseus. Whenever present, Party’s human subjects preside. In pastel portraits, they try on mushrooms as hats, wear bouquets of roses as garments, and otherwise treat creatures as adornments in which they never seem quite at ease, bringing to mind the precariousness of both man and nature in their delicate state of human-dominated coexistence.

Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles
901 E. 3rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013
Show runs through Apr. 12
Temporarily open by appt. only