Above: Courtesy of Ester Partegàs and Nogeuras Blanchard, Barcelona. Photo credit: Roberto Ruiz.
"A Sun in my Pocket”
Thursday, February 6, 4:00 p.m.
Lectures will be in Lawrence Hall, Room 115, 1190 Franklin Boulevard, Eugene, OR 97403.
“My work primarily focuses on sculpture and extends into drawing, image, text, and public projects. I aim to defamiliarize the ordinary, encouraging us to rethink how we form associations, assign value, and construct categories of identity, disposability, and loss. This approach mirrors my personal history, as it engages with experiences of disjunction and dislocation and reflects their lasting effects.
I challenge the boundaries of the "Pop Art" object by deconstructing the commodity and its glossy, overconfident surface—its scale, ambition, and failure to fulfill the promises of progress and emancipation. Inspired by the “poor materials” philosophy, I utilize humble materials to bridge the gap between art and everyday life, reconstructing objects to reveal their latent vulnerability and inherent decay. By incorporating architectural principles, I investigate how subtle, ephemeral, and often overlooked structures shape and sustain civilization—from domestic spaces, the feminine, and the infra-ordinary to the anti-heroic. I inquire: what forms provide habitability and order, contributing to civilization’s fabric yet remaining visually or politically unnoticed or silenced? What do we build when we build?”
- Ester Partegàs, 2024
Ester Partegàs (Barcelona, 1972) has shown extensively nationally and internationally. Most recent shows include The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2025), Ballroom Marfa (2024), TEA Tenerife (2023), Palazzo Delle Exposizione, Rome (2023) NoguerasBlanchard, Madrid (2022); Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2021); Essex Flowers, NY (2021); Pure Joy, Marfa TX (2020); Conde Duque, Madrid (2020); The Drawing Center, NY (2019); the Museum of the City of NY (2019); Transborder Biennial/Bienal Transfronteriza, El Paso Museum of Art + Museo de Arte Ciudad Juárez (2018), MACBA Barcelona (2018).
She has been the recipient of the 2022-2023 Rome Prize for Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome, a 2014 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, and a 2004 Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2004), among others. An artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; MacDowell. She has been faculty at the Yale School of Art, Skowhegan, Virginia Commonwealth University, SUNY Purchase, and since 2017 teaches at Parsons School of Design. Based in New York City, she is a part-time resident of Marfa, TX, and Barcelona.