Ester Partegàs
Rome Prize Winner
American Academy in Rome
Apr 25
Ester Partegàs
Born in La Garriga, Barcelona (1972), currently based in New York, Marfa TX, and Barcelona.
Ester Partegàs’ work seeks, discovers and produces questions about worth, loss and indifference in the generic objects and spaces that we consume. With a varied formal vocabulary that incorporates sculpture, the photographic image, drawing and painting, Partegàs questions our ways of seeing and establishing relationships with our immediate material world.
Since her first exhibitions in the late nineties, Partegàs has developed a theme that explores the urban landscape of the consumer society. A multidisciplinary artist, she easily moves between drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, although in the formal development of her work, volumetric and spatial aspects persist which lead to a definition of the artist as a sculptor. In many of her pieces, Partegàs expresses her interest in the power of the word and its confrontation with the realm of the image. In this way the artist rearranges advertising messages and proposes an unnerving reading of public billboards or covers the heads of passers-by with branded bags, nullifying their identity. At other times she places the spectator in the waiting room of an airport and thus represents a 'no place' to nowhere.
Selected Works
Shelter
2022
Cardboard, Fast-maché, Fabric, Glue, Glazed ceramic, Rebar
53 x 44 x 53 cm (20 7⁄8 x 17 5⁄16 x 20 7⁄8 inches)
Crying Sun
2022
Cardboard, Fast-maché, Fabric, Glue, WoodStock, Wool Scarf, Receipt, Cast Pigmented Polyurethane
70 x 51 x 22 cm (27 9⁄16 x 20 3⁄32 x 8 21⁄32 inches)
Polylumpious Tetraflacidontics (Yellow sun)
2022
Acrylic on paper
Unframed153 x 115 cm (60 1⁄4 x 45 9⁄32 inches) Framed164 x 124 x 4.5 cm (64 9⁄16 x 48 13⁄16 x 1 25⁄32 inches)
Polylumpious tetraflacidontics
2022
Enamel on mylar
130 x 120 x 4 cm (51 3⁄16 x 47 1⁄4 x 1 9⁄16 inches)
knead, penetrate, let go (eggsellent day)
2022
Graphite and stickers on tracing paper
97.5 x 75.5 x 4.5 cm (38 3⁄8 x 29 23⁄32 x 1 25⁄32 inches)
Studies on Mysticism (Blue Icicle)
2017
Acrylic on food packaging
29.5 x 23.5 cm (11 5⁄8 x 9 1⁄4 inches)
Daily collapse (Age hunter)
2008
65 x 81 x 5 cm (25 19⁄32 x 31 7⁄8 x 1 31⁄32 inches)
Daily Collapse (Rush fight)
2007
88 x 67 x 5 cm (34 21⁄32 x 26 3⁄8 x 1 31⁄32 inches)
Barricades (Have I Ever Done Anything Useful?)
2007
Enamel and acrylic on mylar and vinyl, paper
245 x 294 cm (96 15⁄32 x 115 3⁄4 inches)
Les Coses mes importants no son coses
2006
Blue neon sign with dimmer
20 x 300 cm (7 7⁄8 x 118 1⁄8 inches)
Ask your doctor (We the people series)
2006
Inkjet ultrachrome archival print
140 x 112 cm (55 1⁄8 x 44 3⁄32 inches)
Life is Tremendous
2005
Wood, enamel, plaster, resin, acrylic
203 x 91.5 x 46 cm (79 29⁄32 x 36 1⁄32 x 18 1⁄8 inches)Installation
Samesation, 2002
Rice University Art Gallery, Houston
No Retention, 2020
PURE JOY, Marfa, Texas
No Retention, 2020
PURE JOY, Marfa, Texas
The Source, 2015
Public Sculpture for Percent For Art, New York
The Passerby, 2015
Foxy Production, New York
The Passerby, 2015
Foxy Production, New York
The Restless Gardens. Curating the Collection, 2014
Centre d’Art La Panera, Lleida
You Are Here, 2014
Anderson Gallery, New York
In_ We Trust: Art and Money, 2014
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus
2011 Lúmens, 2011
Museu de Valls, Valls
Invasores, 2007
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
News
Exhibitions
The Passerby
MadridMar 25 - May 20, 2017
"For me, these typically over-looked materials serve as clues to a shared social and affective reality”
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WATCHDOG-LAPDOG-PLAYDOG
BarcelonaApr 02 - May 07, 2016
“The press is a watchdog. Not a lapdog. A watchdog. Now, a watchdog can’t be right all the time. He doesn’t bark only when he sees or smells something that’s dangerous. A good watchdog barks at things that are suspicious.” -Dan Rather (American journalist and a former anchor for CBS Evening News)
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Rebava
BarcelonaApr 02 - May 16, 2009
Partegàs recreates an urban landscape inside the gallery space with a multidisciplinary work: video-installation, sculpture and drawing.
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Grasses Saturades
BarcelonaJan 11 - Mar 10, 2007
Ester Partegàs (La Garriga, 1972) presents her second solo show at NoguerasBlanchard, formed by a large wall-mural and a series of digitally manipulated prints that articulate tensions around consumption and excess in a global society.
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Barricades
BarcelonaSep 25 - Nov 20, 2004
Nogueras Blanchard presents the first solo exhibition in a gallery of Esther Partegàs. Barricades has a number of border works between painting, drawing and sculpture to explore urban public spaces and consumer culture, central themes in the artistic practice of Partegàs.
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