At Hauser & Wirth London, Nicolas Party’s “Clotho” Becomes a Temple to Time

In “Clotho,” his first solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London (October 14 – December 20, 2025), Nicolas Party transforms the gallery into a contemplation of time—its cycles, erosions, and renewals. Immersed in walls of electric blue and framed by mustard arches that rhythmically open one space to the next, the installation unfolds like a pantheon of color and form, where painting becomes both architecture and atmosphere. Within this environment, Party presents new pastel works—portraits and treescapes—that extend his sustained inquiry into representation and abstraction, the fragility of matter, and the persistence of beauty.

At the exhibition’s center are two portraits, Portrait with Camille and Portrait with Auguste, inspired respectively by Camille Claudel’s Clotho (1893) and Auguste Rodin’s She Who Was the Helmet Maker’s Once-Beautiful Wife (1885–87). Reimagined through Party’s luminous stillness, these sculptural meditations on the aging body become reflections on the continuum between vitality and decline, ideal and decay. Claudel’s mythic Fate who spins the thread of human life becomes, in Party’s vision, a metaphor for artistic creation itself—the fragile act of bringing something enduring out of dust. The treescapes, in dialogue with these portraits, transpose this reflection into the natural world: some bare and skeletal, others lush with renewal. A single waterfall interrupts their stillness, embodying the inevitability of change and the passage of time.

Party’s mastery of soft pastel—a medium he has revitalized for the twenty-first century—anchors the exhibition in both art-historical resonance and contemporary sensibility. His work recalls the refined luminosity of Rosalba Carriera, the symbolic clarity of Ferdinand Hodler, the chromatic poetry of Odilon Redon, and, at moments, the structural daring of Picasso’s late pastels—while asserting an unmistakably singular language of its own. For Party, pastel is more than pigment; it is matter with metaphysical charge—dust, color, and light. Each mark holds the paradox of the medium: its surface may vanish with a gesture, yet its presence endures with extraordinary intensity.

Born in Lausanne in 1980 and based in New York, Party has become renowned for envisioning exhibitions as total environments, where painting extends beyond the frame into architectural and spatial experience. With “Clotho,” he achieves a distilled synthesis of these concerns—both intimate and monumental, an elegy to the body and a hymn to nature. His pastels, radiant and precarious, suspend the viewer between transience and eternity, reminding us that the act of looking—like the act of painting—is itself an act of renewal. In a world preoccupied with acceleration and change, Party returns us to the stillness of perception, where art, as ever, measures not progress but presence.

In conversation with Whitewall, the artist reflects on how “Clotho” took shape—from treescapes to Claudel and Rodin—and how pastel, that most fragile of materials, has become his instrument for exploring time, fragility, and transformation.

WHITEWALL: How did the idea for “Clotho” first take shape, and what does it mean to bring this body of work to London?

NICOLAS PARTY: I began this show by working on the tree motif that runs throughout it. The exhibition is divided into two distinct groups of works: the portraits that specifically reference sculptures by Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin, and the treescapes. I actually started painting the trees about a year, maybe a year and a half, before creating the portraits.

When I was working on the trees, I always imagined a counterpart—something that could bring a different angle, a kind of tension that would make the viewer see the trees in a new way. As the process evolved, the idea of creating the two portraits emerged—first inspired by Claudel’s Clotho, a sculptural study that later informed one of her more famous works depicting the figure weaving the thread of life. The second was Rodin’s sculpture—also a study of an elderly woman’s body, not literally the mythological figure, but visually and emotionally very compelling.

In the end, it was these two portraits—rooted in those sculptures and the myth—that brought balance to the treescapes. So the show didn’t begin with Clotho; it actually concluded with it.

Rhythms of Scale, Focus, and Tone

WW: Your work moves between large immersive environments and intimate pastels. How do you see “Clotho” fitting within that rhythm of scale and focus in your practice?

NP: In terms of scale, I often work on large, site-specific murals, but in this exhibition there isn’t one of those. The entire show is devoted to pastels on canvas, though within that there’s a variation in size. One of the treescapes is quite large—it’s actually the first painting you see from outside the gallery—while others are much smaller. So there’s still a play with scale, even if everything belongs to the same medium.

I also think about scale through architecture and color. For “Clotho,” I built a wall and created an arched entrance, painting the surrounding walls in different tones. That spatial intervention adds another layer of rhythm and proportion—it changes how the viewer moves through and experiences the work. So even without murals, the show still carries that dialogue between shape, scale, and color that’s always been part of my practice. It feels immediately recognizable to me, almost like a natural continuation of what I’ve explored before.

WW: You’ve drawn from Camille Claudel’s Clotho and Rodin’s She Who Was the Helmet Maker’s Once-Beautiful Wife. What drew you to these two sculptures, and how did they influence the emotional or formal tone of the portraits?

NP: When I decided to include those two portraits in the show—and even name the exhibition “Clotho”—I knew it was a fairly heavy title. It’s a charged figure, one of the three sisters in Greek mythology, and both Claudel and Rodin are such monumental presences in art history. So I was aware that it came with a certain weight. Now that the show is up and alive, I realize how many questions I get about why Clotho, because it carries so much meaning.

The myth, of course, is full of symbolism, whereas the trees in the show are much more open-ended. They can be read in many ways—symbolic, atmospheric, decorative, pictorial. They hold that openness, while the portraits have a kind of density or gravity through their references. I think I wanted that contrast—to create a dialogue between those open, expansive landscapes and these more symbolic, emotionally charged portraits.

As for why I chose these two particular sculptures—my previous show at Hauser & Wirth in New York began with a portrait of my baby at three months old. It opened with this image of new life, of pure presence, and the theme of that exhibition revolved around beginnings. Having a child was a transformative moment for me. For the first time, I became acutely aware of mortality—you start doing the math of how long you’ll share life with this person. You realize that if everything goes as it should, you’ll leave before them. I had never thought of life in that way before. Suddenly you’re conscious of time in a very real, embodied sense—how much of your child’s life you’ll witness, and what you won’t.

“Having a child was a transformative moment for me,”

Nicolas Party

At the same time, I’m 45, and I can see my own body changing—my face, my skin, everything. It’s gradual, but undeniable. So when I saw those sculptures—these incredibly raw, unidealized depictions of aging bodies—I found them both brave and profoundly moving. It’s rare to see an 85- or 90-year-old nude body in art. Usually we see youth, beauty, vitality. Claudel and Rodin dared to show something else: fragility, experience, truth.

Painting those forms made me look closely at them, but also at myself—and at my daughter’s body, so young and full of life. Since then, I’ve had another child, and when you hold a newborn, it’s really like holding one of those angels from Italian painting—their skin so soft, the smell so pure, everything luminous. Even the small, funny details—the scent of milk, that sweetness—feel almost sacred. So I think “Clotho” really grew out of that personal place: my experience of being a father, witnessing new life, and at the same time feeling my own aging. It’s a reflection on that passage—between birth, transformation, and the awareness of time.

The Artist’s Materials, Colors, and Expressions

WW: Clotho, who spins the thread of life, feels like a powerful metaphor for the act of making. Do you see parallels between that gesture and your own process with pastel—this medium that is both tactile and fleeting?

NP: When you ask that question, I realize I hadn’t really thought directly about her act of weaving life itself—but it’s true, it’s definitely there. She’s creating the cycle of life, shaping something both vital and ephemeral. That connects quite naturally to the fragility of pastel as a medium.

Pastel has always felt like the perfect material for exploring fragility in my work. It’s an incredibly delicate medium—essentially made of dust—and that dust-to-dust symbolism carries a lot of weight. You work with your hands; it’s messy, it falls away, particles float in the air as you go. There’s something poetic in that—the image forming through a process that’s constantly disintegrating at the same time.

“Pastel has always felt like the perfect material for exploring fragility in my work,”

Nicolas Party

So yes, maybe that gesture of Clotho—weaving the thread of life, something beautiful yet vulnerable—relates to what happens when I’m working with pastel. It’s about building something transient, something that could almost vanish with a breath, and yet it holds this deep sense of life while it exists.

WW: The treescapes seem to extend the portraits’ meditation on time into the natural world. What do trees allow you to express that perhaps the human figure cannot?

NP: As you’ve said, the tree is a universal symbol—it’s been present for a very long time and across so many different cultures. I come from a Western background and grew up with Western art history, but I’m aware that trees appear in countless religious stories, myths, and symbols around the world, and they still carry that power today.

There are many reasons for that. First, we’re surrounded by them—they’re part of our everyday landscape—but they also embody this extraordinary rhythm of life and time. In most parts of the world, trees go through seasonal transformations every year. In autumn, they seem to fall asleep: the leaves die and fall, the branches become bare, almost skeletal. In winter they look frozen, covered in snow, as if lifeless. But of course, they’re not dead; they’re just resting, conserving energy. Then comes spring, and everything awakens again—the birds return, the leaves reappear, and life bursts back all at once.

I think for humans—especially in the past, when winter was much harder to endure—this reawakening must have felt deeply emotional, almost miraculous. As David Hockney once said, “You can’t cancel spring.” It always comes back. That cycle is an eternal reminder of renewal and continuity, which is probably why trees have become such powerful symbols of life itself.

There’s also something very practical about them for artists. Trees are incredible subjects to draw or paint. You can’t really draw a tree “wrong”—if you add five or ten branches, it’s still a tree. It gives you freedom to explore line, color, composition, and rhythm. There’s no rigid anatomy to get wrong, unlike a human body or an animal in motion. So trees are a perfect playground for painting—they let you be expressive, loose, experimental.

Even children instinctively draw trees—it’s one of the first things we all draw, along with the sun. I think there’s a deep, almost instinctive connection we have to them, both symbolically and creatively. They allow you to explore ideas about time, change, and life itself in a way that feels open, generous, and endlessly renewing.

WW: The electric blue walls shape the exhibition’s atmosphere in a striking way. How do you think about color as something that builds space or mood around a work?

NP: I’ve never really liked looking at paintings on white walls. White, as a color, is too bright—it bounces all the light back at you. It’s a bit like taking a photograph with the sun behind your subject: everything becomes flattened and overexposed. When you hang a painting on a white wall, the reflected light changes the way the colors behave. If the wall were slightly darker—say, a muted gray—the colors would slow down; they’d feel more balanced, more interesting to the eye.

I’ve always been drawn to exploring how wall color shapes the perception of a work. People think of white as neutral, but it’s not. White is pigment—it’s a color like any other. The true absence of color would be pure light or pure darkness, but white paint isn’t that. It’s material; it has a temperature, a presence.

“I’ve always been drawn to exploring how wall color shapes the perception of a work,”

Nicolas Party

For “Clotho,” I chose a very dark navy blue that almost feels electric. At first, it seemed too intense, but once we adjusted the lighting, it created a specific atmosphere—cool, intimate, and a little mysterious. The arches are painted in a mustard yellow that echoes tones found in the treescapes. That yellow acts as a counterpoint, softening and rebounding the blue, giving the space a kind of seasonal rhythm—something like late autumn turning toward winter.

The wall colors set the mood of the exhibition. They create intimacy and change how the paintings are seen. If the show were installed on white walls, it would feel completely different. The greens, the yellows, the earth tones—all those hues come alive against the blue. It holds the light differently; it lets the paintings breathe.

WW: Pastel has such a rich art-historical lineage, from Degas to Redon, yet your use feels wholly contemporary—both sculptural and atmospheric. What drew you to pastel as your primary medium, and how do you think its fragility and tactility inform your exploration of portraiture and form?

NP: I started working with pastel around fifteen years ago. At that time, I was painting mostly in oil, but I was very, very slow—and frustrated by that slowness. I was only producing about three paintings a year, and they weren’t even very good. I wasn’t exploring enough; I wasn’t learning. Then I came across a small pastel by Picasso—Tête de femme from 1921—he’s not really known as a “pastel person,” but of course, he did everything—and I absolutely fell in love with it. It was a small portrait of a head, and I thought, that’s exactly what I want to do.

So I went straight to the art store, bought a box of soft pastels and some paper, and started. It was really love at first sight. I loved the immediacy of it—the direct contact between your hand and the color. You draw, and the image appears instantly, with no drying time, no mediation. From that moment, I never really stopped.

Then came the challenge of scale. Pastel was originally meant for small works on paper, so figuring out how to work large—on canvas—was complicated. It forced me to learn everything about the material: how to fix it, how to layer it, how far I could push it.

As you mentioned, Degas is the figure most people associate with pastel, and he used it in very experimental ways—sometimes with water, sometimes on unconventional surfaces. But when I started studying the history of the medium, I discovered that its golden age was really the 1700s, during the Rococo period, especially in France, but also in England and Italy. The Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera was a revelation to me—she essentially transformed pastel from a sketching tool into a medium for finished works. Before that, it was mostly used to add highlights to drawings, but she made it luminous and complete. Carriera was incredibly successful, and her influence spread all across Europe.

I look at her work a lot. Carriera only made portraits—always in pastel—and that total commitment to the medium inspired me. It’s funny, because today pastel is so underused. If you go to an art fair, you’ll hardly find any—maybe a few studies, but almost no large-scale finished works. It’s such a beautiful material: immediate, fragile, dusty, tactile—and yet so few artists are using it seriously. So in a way, I’m always trying to advocate for it, to show that pastel can still feel contemporary, physical, and alive.

In Dialogue with Past, Present, and Future

WW: Your work often feels in dialogue with the past while deeply grounded in the present. What does time mean to you as an artist?

NP: I think artists—maybe especially painters—naturally look to the past because there are so many examples to learn from. Usually, if you choose to be a painter, it’s because you love painting. You’ve spent time in museums, you’ve studied the history, the stories of great artists, how they mastered drawing, painting, pastel, and so on. So you already have this relationship with time. When you look at a painting, you’re almost in direct conversation with the past.

The magic of an artwork is that it can be just as relevant now as when it was made. In painting that might not always be obvious, but in music it’s very clear. Take Mozart, for example—when you listen to one of his pieces, people today feel moved in the same way audiences did over 200 years ago. That tells us something profound: despite all the changes, we’re still the same in many ways. We still feel joy, sadness, love, anger—the same emotions that moved people centuries ago.It’s very different from science, which truly evolves. You wouldn’t go to a dentist from 300 years ago—but you’d still look at a Goya or a Rembrandt and think, that’s extraordinary. Art doesn’t “improve” over time; it doesn’t need to. Painting, music, literature—they all keep returning to the same human questions. Shakespeare’s plays are still performed everywhere, and people still recognize themselves in those characters. That continuity says a lot about who we are.

“The magic of an artwork is that it can be just as relevant now as when it was made,”

Nicolas Party

So as much as we believe we’ve changed, I think we really haven’t—at least not in how we feel. That’s why art won’t be transformed by technology in the same way other things might. AI can do many things, but it doesn’t have emotion—it doesn’t have humanity or fragility. And that’s what art is about. It reminds us of those things: our simplicity, our complexity, our shared condition. Maybe that’s the point—we don’t evolve out of feeling. We just keep rediscovering it.