Nicolas Party at The Modern Institute

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As Party hues desaturate the underpinning becomes clearer: banality. It was always there it was just masked by Party lighting. The Disco turned off, the overhead lights reveal your unpleasant face. In the other room of the paintings of the world burning? That's your friend reminding you you've got work tomorrow, now today. The world is on Fire! Thanks Nicolas! Gosh sure wish we hadn't taken all those Party drugs yesterday. I might be able to feel something about this impossibly lackluster apocalypse of today. But this is how the world ends, incredibly mediocre paintings. 

Nicolas Party at The Modern Institute

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The world is insane so act like it. The decor turned to 11, become lurid, horrible. Isn't that our world currently? The berating of sense. Have you come to enjoy your pummeling? And is Party's really what others have called "sincerity and joy"? "Polychromy" states the press release, as if maybe we thought of Greek statues colored as they were, this would be our world now. But our eyes experience exhaustion, our cones cannot handle, biological imprints on our art a certain taste as barrier against a visual depletion, but maybe we would learn to love this chromatic pain.

Nicolas Party at Gregor Staiger



The wall motifs oft used beneath the paintings a buoy softening the blow of their initial banality. But first hating these paintings is the point. The crucial moment comes when you give it up, criticality, and let the nicities of them wash over you. They want you to accept them as they are, to require nothing more. God they're so horrible, take some pleasure in the perversity of liking them. A man wearing eye makeup.