June 19 - August 31, 2020
From PURE JOY:
“The three sculptures presented here are part of Partegàs’ Baskets. No Retention series that plays with scale and unexpected materials to make a ubiquitous and familiar object both alluring and strange. The works channel the history of Modernist sculpture, from early abstraction to Pop and onwards.
Starting with the reproduction of a complete plastic laundry hamper, the three pieces emerge as fragments of a reality that is in a constant state of collapse and subsequent repair. The largest work, Room, suggests a homemade animal trap ready to catch its victim, while its white interior presents a cozy nook complete with children’s doodles scrawled on its walls – drawings made by the artist’s 5-year-old daughter – suggesting an intimate place for freedom and play. Handle, a gaping mouth displaying its teeth, consists of the half-broken handle of the basket, precariously balanced atop a column of sponges reminiscent of the repetitive and tedious labor implied in daily life. Corner is a corner section of the basket that in order to remain upright has to tenaciously wrap around a heavy piece of lumber by a rope made out of t-shirts’ collars. Ostentatiously flaunting what’s normally hidden, the care instruction and brand labels take the spotlight in an effort to bring together privacy and care with politics and consumerism, a prevailing issue underlaying most of Partegàs’s works. Turning the anonymity and powerlessness of ordinary objects on their heads, these works combine aggressiveness and destruction with a sense of sensuality and care, inviting us to interrogate our established convictions of safety and progress.
Ester Partegàs (La Garriga, Barcelona, 1972) lives and works in New York City and Marfa, TX. She holds an MFA from the Universitat de Barcelona and postgraduate studies in Multimedia Art at Universität der Künste, Berlin. Exhibitions include: “What’s Love Got to Do with It?: Open Sessions 2018-2020,” The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2019); Transborder Biennial / La Bienal Transfronteriza, El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX, and Museo de Arte Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (2018); “The Passerby,” Nogueras Blanchard, Madrid, Spain (solo)(2017); “The Passerby,” Foxy Production, New York, NY (solo)(2015); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (solo) (2007); and the Athens (2013), Moscow (2007), and Busan Biennials (2006); and a Chinati Artist-in-Residence in 2012, Marfa, TX. The artist’s public project “The Source” was commissioned by Percent For Art for Plaza de las Americas, New York, NY (2015). She is represented by Foxy Production, New York, and Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona/Madrid.”
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1 comment
Honest, humorous, informative, and ingenious! Thanks for covering it!