A new installation by Nicolas Party enlivens the swimming pool at Le Sirenuse, a family-run boutique hotel in the beautiful coastal town of Positano, Italy. The Swiss artist, best known for his abstract interpretations of familiar landscapes, portraits and still lifes that are both fluid and vibrant, has completely transformed the poolside terrace into an immersive and playful space where organic forms intertwine and dance underwater.
Nicolas Party reinterprets Le Sirenuse's beloved swimming pool
The project marks the 11th addition to the hotel’s ongoing site-specific commission series, led by art advisor Silka Rittson-Thomas. Party’s work, a lively aquascape made of mosaics – a choice instructed per the wishes of the hotel’s co-owners, Antonio and Carla Sersale, to honour Antonio’s late father’s vision – is a joyful reinterpretation of the pool’s distinctive view of the sea and mountains. Previous commissions have featured international artists such as Martin Creed, Stanley Whitney, Rita Ackermann, Alex Israel, Matt Connors and Caragh Thuring, among others.
After spending a week immersing himself in the hotel’s atmosphere, Party returned to his New York studio to begin the creative process. Following a shift from an initial idea of referencing Ancient Roman still lifes, the figurative artist envisioned an abstract motif in blue and green, reflecting the connection between clouds and water. At the pool's deepest point, he placed a golden mosaic disc to represent the sun, inviting bathers to jump into the pool and feel ‘as if they were diving into the sky.’
Ultimately, Party hopes that his art at Le Sirenuse will be seen as both ‘metaphorical and symbolic’, allowing bathers to interpret the buoyant shapes they encounter as they swim. ‘Everything,’ he points out, ‘is interconnected. We’re just living in the middle of it: the clouds make the water that creates the waves through rain, and then the colour of the water is the colour of the sky reflected.’
Having created a final sketch for the pool using his preferred medium, pastels, Party faced the challenge of translating his vision into mosaics. He turned to Bisazza, Italy’s leading glass mosaic firm, to reproduce his design on hundreds of sequentially numbered square sheets, each 15 tiles long and 15 tiles wide. These mosaic sheets were then shipped to Positano, where, in January 2024, the expert Italian mosaicisti Fabrizi brothers, Luciano and Marcello, painstakingly began laying them.
Le Sirenuse is located at Via Cristoforo Colombo, 30, Positano, sirenuse.it
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